Category: Opinion

March 19, 2025 – Old Habits Die Hard

March 19, 2025 / / 0 Comments

There have been a project going on right in front of my house. Because Main Street is also a state highway, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been involved. We have been aware of the project for about 18 months when they sent out a nice mailer explaining what was going to happen.

This town is sidewalk poor. I don’t believe that sidewalks were required until relatively recently. As a result walking through neighborhoods are a patchwork of sidewalk and no sidewalk which makes me mostly walk on the road out of convenience. What sidewalks we do have are the primary paths to school. My house is on that path.

For the twenty years living here, we have had a crossing guard morning and afternoon when school is in session. ODOT decided that they were going to add a flashing light signal. Probably a good idea considering we have had multiple pedestrians hit over the years.

Unbeknownst to me, the state decided to add the new crosswalk signal on the other corner of the intersection, not in front of my house. It is fine by me. I think that they decided to do that because they put the bus stop on my side yard. This keeps the congestion a little more segregated. I was surprised because there was no sidewalk on that side of the road all the way down. They had to create a whole new sidewalk on the other side of the street.

The project is almost done. They still have not powered up the signal yet, I am not sure why. But a couple of weeks ago, I watched a machine scrape off the existing striping (our crossing). Then they painted new striping at the new crosswalk. Despite that the new crossing looks pretty much ready to go, the school crossing guard is still is using the old, unmarked crossing.

Part of me wonders if there will continue to be a crossing guard once the signal is active. There is no crossing guard when Main Street crosses US 99 at the traffic light. I feel like it is just habit that the crossing guard is using the old crosswalk. This is one of three crossings that are almost complete.

I went to look up the definition of habit. The very first result was something called Habit Burger. I have never heard of them, but apparently it is a national chain. The Webster definition is “an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary”. We usually talk about habits in terms of good and bad ones but there could some that are neither.

I think that you know the difference between good and bad habits so I don’t need to get too involved in all of that. I remember that from the time I was in high school until about ten years ago, I used to eat cereal each weekday morning. When we decided to go gluten free for a little while, I stopped eating cereal. Now, my kids eat it incessantly but I might have a bowl once every couple of months. Hooray for me.

But the older I get, the harder habits are to break. As an example, my podcasting habit. I have been listening to some podcasts since 2008. I almost feel guilty if I am not prioritizing keeping up and I will even do things so that I can do something while listening. I am not an idiot nor do I think that is particularly harmful but it does drive my behaviors daily.

End Your Programming Routine: I didn’t know that the city had an eight foot easement on our lot. I lost four rose bushes while they tore up and installed the utility vault and transformer for the new lights (also on our land). I am going to be glad when this project is over, it has been a bit of an inconvenience with parking and other things while they have had the street blocked. Hopefully, it will make things safer, if people can break the habit of the old crosswalk.

February 26, 2025 – The Leadership Fallacy

February 26, 2025 /

My first professional job was with a small company. We had less than fifty employees at the time that I was hired. It was a pretty good place to be, in fact my first boss told me that only one other person had left the company in thirty years of existence. Talk about loyalty. When I left, I struggled with whether this was the right thing to do considering nobody left. But, like the generational high to the awakening of the Fourth Turning theory, eventually everything must change.

After a couple of years at a large company, I was headed back to a small company where I was one of about twenty employees. I stayed as long as I could stand it and what I mean by that is that the company was bought and the dynamics were not the original deal that I signed up for. Clearly, I could name a list of flaws with every place I worked or I would still be employed there. But the places where I was most vested were the small companies.

Both of my small company experiences I rose consistently and relatively rapidly. I attributed this to my ‘leadership’ ability which originally came from my Boy Scout experience of my youth. I never seek to become a leader, it just seems to follow me as a result of disfunction and ineptitude. Eventually, I get to the point where I can see the obvious flaws and what I would do to fix the problems.

I had a epiphany a couple of weeks ago and this was that the term leadership is not what I have always believed it to be. My definition of leadership has always included ideas like competence, initiative and success. I know, I have been teasing this so here it is. Leaders are people that implement other’s ideas. Good leaders do it successfully.

Think about it, if it wasn’t someone else’s idea then you would be an entrepreneur and not a leader. For this reason, people that start their own business are rebelling against something. Maybe it is being managed, maybe it is to push your own idea versus someone else’s. But at the end of the day, starting your own business is a systematic rebellion.

In my professional world, the concept that everyone has to be a leader is pushed to the extreme. Now realizing my new definition, of course why wouldn’t they want that? Leadership is a homogenization concept. I would say that these companies benefit from beating the entrepreneurship out of their employees. An evangelical employee is the best circumstance possible.

Many, many years ago when I left my first job the sales manager said something to me that has always stuck. “The people that get you there are probably not the ones that take you to the next level”. I always took that to mean 1) it was OK to leave my job 2) my grievances against the company were not unheard but would not change and 3) just because I did good work turning things around doesn’t mean that I was destined to do my job forever. Since that job, I have learned that I am best at organizing mess rather than accelerating or optimizing it. I took solace in my decision to leave as well as I was doing the right thing.

It has taken me until today to accept that because I am a good leader that I probably won’t be a successful entrepreneur. This is because the mission is different. I don’t know why nor is it exactly what I wanted to be five years ago when I started AltF4 or had other dreams self-employment. But again, God has a plan for me. As much as I want to be the master of my destiny, I cannot say that the role I am destined to play is the one that I think I want.

End Your Programming Routine: With this inflection about the definition of leadership, I have come to understand is that leadership talent is not exclusive to one domain. What I mean by that is I don’t have to be a leader in just my job. I can be a leader in my church, community, the trap team, my son’s non-profit, my family, etc. There is not one place that I have exclusive control, nor should I when it comes to those entities. Let’s be honest, as much as I want to be an industrious and prosperous employee, in the game of life this only takes one so far. My life existed before my job and my job will exist after I have fulfilled the role. While I think I will always be a good leader, it is where those talents are employed that actually make a difference.

February 12, 2025 – And So Goes Change

February 12, 2025 /

You probably think that I am a sentimental sap. That may be true but I recently read that my old dorm complex is being torn down and I got a little sad. This is the place where I figuratively came of age. This is where I met my wife, this is where I made friends and where I learned that warm Old English 800 was terrible but it was fun anyway.

Demolition underway at SOU’s Cascade Complex – SOU News

By Friday noon the planning was already underway for the Friday night party. Who’s room, who was buying and when? A typically afternoon of anticipation involved watching SportsCenter after the girls watched their soap operas or playing touch football or intramural softball with the guys. After that it was Nintendo, forties and pass the pipe (if you were into that, me only a couple of times). Saturday morning was non-existent but waking up in the early afternoon started the cycle over again. You have to do that stuff when you are young, right?

Of course that was not all of my weekends, but a lot of them. The others were with my girlfriend. It was going out to local restaurants for breakfast or going to the mall in the nearby town. When at the dorm and not partying it was study time. A lot of days and nights working on math problems or chemistry problems with her on the bed watching TV.

The cafeteria was central to all of the halls in this complex. It was brand new in 1992 the year before I attended the school. We all called it ‘Butt Food’ for a nice, adoring nickname. Even though I primarily hung out with people from my dorm, the cafeteria was a meeting place for all students that lived on campus. It was infrequent where we didn’t meet another friend that was there at the same time.

After doing some reading, it appears that the new dorm complex was occupied in 2014. Not totally forgotten, classes for certain departments were held in the abandoned dorm complex while their particular buildings were being renovated. Science, Theater and Athletics have used the space in the interim. This is where the problems with maintenance costs began to surface. ‘If we are going to keep using this in this way, we really should…’

Tearing down the dorms seems like a permanent loss. It has been over thirty years since I called it my home but the fact that they are gone makes the memories fade that much faster. Every time we were in town, we would drive by to rekindle the old, very good memories. The tossing of keys out of the window so people could get in after hours, the times we lounged on the grass in the early spring sun even the ten minute parking limit that we had to rush to beat the ticket writer.

I live in a town with a sister college to Southern Oregon University. Since I have lived here twenty years, I have seen an amazing amount of change. A new athletic complex, student medical center and education building that has been built. The old education building has become ‘Student Success Center’ last year. The Oregon Police Academy used to be here, and now the math department has moved in. The Oregon Military Academy used to be here as well. That is now the ‘Student Welcome Center’. Since the pandemic years, it seems like they have gone crazy building empty buildings with less and less on-campus students.

I can say without a doubt that there has been more change here than at SOU because I am connected to both. Both are regional schools but here, at least half of the students are commuters. The population centers are completely different with half a million locally close versus 100,000 in southern Oregon. That is to say there are many more students on campus and in town in SOU with similar enrollment sizes.

The title is an homage to Kurt Vonnegut. As soon as someone got killed for doing something stupid or something completely random kills a soldier “And So It Goes” was his response. This isn’t random nor is it stupid but it does kill my memory.

End Your Programming Routine: The advantage of getting old is wisdom. I am not opposed to them being torn down as they have been vacant for over ten years. I am sure that they did not survive the digital revolution as there was no wiring for modern data service. As a taxpayer, maintenance and upkeep for sentimental purposes is a fools errand. Ultimately, I am just sad to witness the end of my era.

January 15, 2025 – Wildfire, Go Now!

January 15, 2025 /

It is hard for me to say that fires are getting worse or there is just so many more people in proximity to the wild fire boundaries. Of course, the usual suspects wasted no time assigning this fire to climate change and it is our retribution for our fossil fuel reliance. I say it is waaay more complicated than that.

Early indicators say that this is another fire triggered by high winds causing sparking transmission lines in an unkempt power right away. Now we have Paradise, Maui and almost assuredly the LA fires with the same cause and deadly results. The latest conventional wisdom says to prevent these fires, turn off the power before the transmission lines spark.

Why that was not done, I don’t know. If I were to speculate I would say that it was probably too inconvenient for the residents and a lot of loud mouth, wimps that are prevalent in Southern California. That being said, let us put further blame and speculation behind us. Wild fire is no joke and survival is not a political topic.

We are very familiar with wildfire in the west. It just so happens the our fire season correlates with the dry season July – September. Being fire ready in January seems very out of mind to me. But, I suppose that is altered reality of California; nothing ever seems real.

The first step in this is to survive. Yes, there are anecdotal stories of people staying behind in Paradise and hosing down their homes with garden hoses and ultimately saving them and surviving. However, eighty-four people didn’t survive that fire. I would venture to say that more people died than survived staying home. The best tactic is to leave.

I don’t know the details and therefore it would be presumptuous of me to say that I would have been ready to leave with everything that I needed. But house fire or wild fire have the same result, so a fire plan is in order for everyone. What is your prioritized list of things to grab if you have time? Do your vehicles have enough fuel (or range) to withstand hours worth of traffic? Is there even an exit route possible when vehicles clog the roads?

I highly doubt that that it is possible to develop a perfectly, flexible plan. But thought can be a head start to reduce panic and regret. Having an assembly point, a place to go, insurance and documentation can go a long way to evacuation peace of mind. Everyone talks about the regret of losing memories, but it is often times not practical to grab that stuff before you leave unless you keep them ready to go at all times. That also seems not very practical.

I like a prepared car and a go bag would be a pretty good idea as well. This way if it is flood or fire or a zombie hoard you have a few things to hold through. Some snacks, a change of clothes, some toiletries and a deck of cards and a refillable water bottle would make life a little more comfortable for a couple of hopeful days. Those things could be ready for any emergency and a moment’s notice.

End Your Programming Routine: We all say this ‘It’s just stuff’. I sure would hate to have to make that decision but I also understand that we are not taking it with us. From that standpoint, survival is paramount. I am a big proponent of leaving when the ‘Go Now’ is given. Fortunately, I live in a very low risk area for that sort of thing but that doesn’t mean that I cannot have a house fire. Mindset. That is the most important thing.

December 31, 2024 – Year In Review

December 31, 2024 /

It has been kind of a ho-hum year if I have to say so myself. I am going to look back at the AtF4 highlights or favorites today. One thing that kind of sticks out to me is that I think this has been the flattest year of AltF4 to date. It was a year of long book series, long running projects and fighting cancer. I went through the effort of looking back from my entire year to see what it is I did and what I liked.

  • January – I started out thinking I was going to build a wine cellar. First, I wanted to move the ducts.
  • March – It wasn’t sexy, but it was one of the best projects I should have done years ago. I finished raising the ducts into the stud bays.
  • April – Chemo started. I also started buying some radios. I got my GMRS license.
  • June – I started planning my PCT hike. I also started spotty walking in an effort to get into shape.
  • July – My wife had her stem cell transplant. I spent the entire month away from home.
  • August – I survived reading The Devine Comedy
  • October – Burn out is realized. I took a nice five day fishing vacation with my dad, uncle and brother.
  • November – Family trip to Montana for Thanksgiving. Who could forget the Election results as well.
  • December – The theme of this month was fatigue.

Of course, there is nothing more important than fighting for your life and the business that comes with it. As a result when I looked through the year, I felt like my writing was much more diverse and interesting in the first quarter of the year. It has gone steadily down hill since that time. I had a hard time even finding some highlights toward the end of the year.

Not every month got a mention in my summary because I didn’t see a post that I felt was remarkable or fully inspired for the month. I think that was a combination of my selection for what I was talking about and doing and my personal life. Long running works and little time made a diversity of topics scarce.

The trip to Montana was definitely one to remember. That being said, not everything is for sharing here. It also went by so fast and then we launched directly Christmas that it was hard to get any sort of rest as a result. I would say that I am starting the year at a deficit. I have a deficit of topics and plans going into 2025.

I can tell that because despite not posting for the entire last week, I am still struggling to get this out in time. I keep looking for that dose of Vitamin B and is going to turbo charge that feeling I was getting when I started this endeavor in 2019. Intuitively, I knew that the novelty of my series Pursuit of Happiness that I did in 2021 just has not materialized in the last year. I haven’t really even done any projects that I was proud of since I started the duct work.

I always like to look forward and not just back. Guess what? I think it is going to be another year of the same. Plans are moving forward for my hike which means that most of my spare time is going to be dedicated to training and practice. Things have basically slipped since Thanksgiving. I am hoping that the new year will finally clear up the social schedule (but probably not the weather).

We are also planning on hosting our (former) Spanish exchange student’s family for a week of Pacific Northwest touring June. So that will be a week of my vacation plus a week of hiking and I will be mostly tapped out for the year. We talked about travelling to Taiwan over Christmas but that has not been solidified.

End Your Programming Routine: Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself because despite how I feel about my creative output, it was a very successful year from a personal standpoint. My wife beat cancer, my oldest son beat the school system, my younger son beat his exchange and is on his way to his last year in school. That is something worthy of being happy about. So, let’s kick 2024 to the curb to hopefully find a better 2025.

December 19, 2024 – Things That Makes You Go, Huh

December 19, 2024 /

I am kind of behind the eight ball here. It has been party after party, late night after late night and working like a banshee. Add to that some emotional struggles not just what I wrote yesterday but also some additional drama. So, a normal Christmas season. I need to get my Festivus podcast put together so I am putting out a cheap one here.

I had planned to review a book that I am reading. I thought that I had two weeks to go to finish it and I haven’t read a page since. That is getting pushed to next year since I am taking a break for Christmas. The other day, I checked the mailbox and it was crammed full of envelopes. It took me four handfuls to empty it.

This picture is 41 benefits statements from the insurance company. I couldn’t help but laugh and laugh as I was sorting through the pile. I surmised that the hospital finally got around to submitting to the insurance company for my wife’s treatment over the summer. I only read a couple to make sure they were for the same event. Sure enough, it was.

We are definitely not there yet, but I imagine that this is the kind of practice that is going disappear as Artificial Intelligence gets a real footing. The reason being is that this logic is pretty complicated. A thinking person would say, one claim and one document. Instead of generating a document for every line item, it would be one document with every transaction (think bank statement).

But, this gets into the complication of the logic. You can imagine that each vendor/provider/service ends up with a different task code or billing line. With that each of those equal a transaction. The logic then ties each transaction a letter. This way the system does not have to know if these transactions are related or not. It is the simplest way of laying things out. And simple is always the most robust.

If there is any doubt, this is what I do. Take a scenario, break it down into to the steps, that is critical to getting it right. A warning though, the output is always important. The reason it is critical is that the output changes all of the details within the steps. As an example, I have often had to deliver reports (letters in this case) with the project. And often those are an after thought, with the assumption that all of the data is captured. But when it is not, then sometimes you have to even re-program the steps and step logic to capture.

Because the software process is complicated and technical, what goes on behind the scenes is obscure. For that reason, the industry has become reliant on sloppy practices. Think about electric cars. I hear that a new model (like the Mustang Mach-E) consistently has improved over time. Without substantial infrastructure changes, a 2020 model is essentially the same as a 2024 model. This is because they are running the same operating system if you will.

Because nobody knows what is going on at the consumer level, the industry uses this as cover to release substandard code and iterate to a final or better state. Realize that some of this is a necessary evil, it is not just a conspiracy theory. The reality is that there are deadlines and that a manufacturer would not want to release a 2020 vehicle finally in 2024. That would also be bad for business.

The other day, I had a Windows 10 Blue Screen (of Death). This is the first time I have seen this in years. It used to be fairly common twenty years ago, in fact I didn’t even know that they still existed it has been so long. A Porche 911, is fifty years of evolution. Sure, if you compare today’s to an original, they are not the same car but the result is constant evolution. It didn’t make a leap from one generation to another. That is what software is.

I know that all of the contrarians like to highlight the simplicity of Linux and the advantages of crowd sourcing. I also agree that it is good and I appreciate the benefits. But what cannot be denied is that Microsoft has built a stable and widely accepted operating system. Good luck getting your very specialized TV tuner card to work in Linux unless you are going to program it yourself.

End Your Programming Routine: Choice is good. Sometimes what is seen as ludicrousness, waste or incompetence actually has a reason. Despite the $20 of postage to mail all of those statements out, they have to doing something to make billions in profits last year. Make no mistake, the only way insurance companies make money is by charging the patients so we paid for this but there is a method to the madness. In my book forty-one explanation of benefit statements in one day is mad.

November 5, 2024 – Happy Election Day, We Are Living 1984

November 5, 2024 /

I have been looking forward to this day for quite a while. I have been getting phone calls and text messages heavily since our primary in May. No matter what the results are, it will be over. That is something to celebrate.

I hope that you enjoyed yesterday’s podcast. I have linked to other podcasts before but this is the first time I have featured someone else’s work. This is a podcast that I subscribe to so the message was not new to me. In previous references, the host never referred to such specifics like the uniform, when and where to wear etc.

Read the story here.

Today we are going to go back to an old friend, George Orwell and 1984. If you remember, the main character Winston worked for the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth. His job primarily was to read through published work and look for words, slogans etc that do not conform with Newspeak. Newspeak was the official, approved language of the regime. Secondarily, if the work he was reviewing was somehow non-conforming in other ways, for instance economic news that was inaccurate, Winston was in charge of modification and document control.

This practice led Winston to change the copy and then go back into the archives and modify any existing documents. Anything that was now obsolete was thrown away in a device called the ‘Memory Hole’ which ostensibly was destroyed and gone forever.

What makes this tactic useful is not that it is accurate but that it frequently changes. This makes it impossible to actually know what the truth is. As you can imagine, it is not easy to recall all of the published newspapers so that one day it might state that we are at war with country A and another day, it might stat that we are allied with country A and at war with country B.

If this practice goes on long enough, it is like playing a shell game. If you didn’t come in from the start and pay attention all along, you will never know what is happening. Combine that with stiff penalties for descent or even questioning, there is no point in trying to guess the truth.

Circle back to today. Based on this story I have linked to, we are living 1984. Honestly, I don’t really care what Biden said. I do believe that he spoke his truth. What is more concerning is that fact that the record was changed. Not only that, the administration is in on the cabal. Karine Jean-Pierre is quoted as saying “… just to clarify, he was not calling Trump supporters garbage…” But in fact Biden did. If he really meant something different, then the proper action is an apology with clarification, not clarification with a changed record. Everybody know that is wrong.

This is dangerous precedent. They will get away with this and a few more times and this will become routine. It is convenient to rail against it when the situation is in favor but both sides now have a new technique to deal with uncomfortable situations.

Do you honestly not know why healthcare mandate was not repealed or government will never stop getting bigger? It will never have to as long as people are willing to accept lies. They don’t care. They don’t care about deficit spending, they don’t care about the environment, they don’t care about LGBTQ+ rights or voter fraud or unions or anything else because we are stuck in our positions and cannot see the forest from the trees.

End Your Programming Routine: You know what they say about sexual assault in therapy? Being angry continues to give the abuser the power. Do you not see the correlation here? Be as mad as you want about your pet issues but I am telling you now that this is a watershed moment. We just took another step toward totality of autocratic rule. Just change the record and deny it happened.

September 18, 2024 – My Love/Hate With Linux

September 18, 2024 /

The sun is on the horizon for Windows 10. The stated date support ends is October 14, 2025. I have stated that my strategy is to gain some familiarity with Linux. When that day comes, I will be making the switch, whether I like it or not. See my post yesterday on running machines without vendor support.

A lot of people would find Ubuntu relatively acceptable if they were willing to learn new programs like Thunderbird for email. Heck, it installs with Office Libre, a full office suite for free. I pay several hundred dollars a year to maintain Microsoft Office. Office Libre will read those files, again for free.

Unfortunately for me, I am not the standard user. I have to be interested in Software Defined Radio and TV tuner cards. This requires a lot more than the standard Facebook user. There are things that have to occur like blacklisting the Linux driver from the kernel using the ‘vi’ editor. Fortunately for me, this is the third time I have done this. It is starting to become familiar to me.

My third time started with me trying to figure out ‘Myth TV’. This is the Linux program used to watch and record programs with my latest TV tuner card I purchased this summer. Due to me struggling to get this card to work, I decided that I needed to test this card in an environment more familiar to me, Windows.

I rescued this computer from my wife’s mother’s estate. It had not been powered on for several years when I obtained it. I decided that I would install Ubuntu on a new SSD to allow me to access the old data if needed for estate purposes. But, it has been almost two years now and I have already searched for anything that I thought might be useful. I found nothing.

As a result, I thought that I would refresh Windows 10 for purposes of testing this tuner card. This is when I found out that yes, I have a knowledge gap with Linux, but the real problem with my dual operating system boot was the fault of UEFI. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is what the acronym stands for. Because of how I partitioned the hard drive the last time I installed Ubuntu, I had to start of again.

UEFI is a BIOS replacement (don’t worry, I will explain). BIOS is the software that is embedded on a chip and loads up the basic required drivers like keyboard and hard disk. It was determined in the mid 2000s that BIOS had limitations for the new hardware coming online. Computers of my vintage have both a BIOS and UEFI making things even more confusing.

It is also true that UEFI is the reason I had to reload Ubuntu last time as well. I was trying to update the driver for UEFI when I bricked my first installation. I got into a spot where only Windows would load and I wanted to keep that data. If this were the old days of just BIOS, I would set my boot sequence once and that is the way the computer would load until I changed it.

It has taken me several weeks of fiddling around to really figure out how this works. When my computer reboots, I need to hit F12 until the UEFI menu comes up. From there, I pick how the computer is going to load. This means, that if I walk away on the reboot, it will load Windows, because this is how the BIOS is set to boot. So, if I actually want Ubuntu I need to hang around.

My silver lining is that my card works. You might recall that I had to fashion a mounting bracket. I also had to plunk down a license fee to Hauppauge for the Windows program but now I know that the tuner works. So, it is back to Ubuntu and MythTV. I have finally mastered the boot sequence so I can go back and forth if desired. I have my SDR installed again.

Things are looking up for me. I want to get this project finished so I can get back to radios. I still have only really turned on my scanner, I have some ideas about setting up a workstation for different radios in that space. There is always a million other things that I want to get to. The TV tuner is just the gateway to having the football game on while I reload or do something at my bench.

End Your Programming Routine: Let me state that I don’t hate Linux. I hate the fact that I am getting old and learning new technology is getting harder. Time is a more valuable commodity than aptitude. I don’t have days and days to fart around, I just want things to work. I find myself stumbling around until I get it, but it is hard to ‘learn’ in this fashion.

September 4, 2024 – Something About a Dog

September 4, 2024 /

We have been dog owners for most of our lives. We have had a number of breeds but I am particularly fond of the hunting breeds. I grew up with a Springer Spaniel and we have had a Dalmatian, Beagles, a Shiatzu and our two retrievers. That is a pretty good sampling of dogs. I also like the more docile nature of female dogs. Admittedly, I appreciate that they don’t stop and pee every thirty steps either.

Pictured below is our current dog, Raya. She is a descendant from our last dog Snowflake. Snow was a particularly loving dog that used to lay at the end of the driveway as the kids walked by on their way home from school. The kids would run up and pet her and she loved it. She would run off (not far) to get petted and attention from strangers. Multiple times we got calls from people that said they had Snow in there car to bring her home.

Unfortunately, Snow died of hyperthermia due to an unknown heart defect. We were tragically hurt by that so after a year of grieving we tried to fill the hole with another dog, Raya. Snow was a purebred English Retriever. Raya is a mix of Golden Retriever and Bernese Mountain Dog. Hence, she is all black rather than a typical color spectrum of Goldens. I would say that overall, she looks like a large Golden Retriever that is black with the long hair and everything.

It is really not fair to compare the two. Snow was pure love. She loved everybody and everybody loved her. Raya takes some getting used to. She can be very off putting and even come off as aggressive to strangers by growling and baring her teeth. The vet has a muzzle order on her even though she has mellowed out with age. They said it was because she was a Covid dog and was very isolated for the first year. I don’t know, she is very steady at the groomers and stands calmly on the table while they do their work.

The funny thing is that this behavior is not exhibited toward everyone. So, I don’t know if she knows something I don’t or what it is. When I am walking her, people sometimes ask if they can pet her and I decline because I don’t really know how she will react. But once Raya gets to know you, which doesn’t take long, she won’t leave you alone. She is constantly underfoot if possible. I feel like she is the exact mix of her two breeds. She has some of the exuberance of a Golden Retriever as well as the livestock guardian of the Bernese.

There was a night that I was staying in Portland and the kids were home alone. Our son called about two in the morning saying that the dog was barking and he saw a flash of light. You can see how often we actually get thunderstorms by that confusion. As much as I miss the lovey-dovey Snow, I feel confident that Raya really feels a duty to protect this house and this family.

At the beginning of the year, my wife was really sick. We cancelled Thanksgiving and my wife didn’t get out of bed in between Christmas and New Years. Raya knew that something was wrong and would get up on the bed and lay her head on my wife’s lap as she laid in bed all day. Some people say that some dogs can smell cancer (or at least sense something is majorly wrong). I suspect that this was a recognition that something had changed, but who knows.

Thankfully, Raya doesn’t do some things that Snow used to do. Raya doesn’t eat socks left out overnight. When my kids were younger, I had to go on sock patrol every night to make sure that we wouldn’t lose another one. Sometimes I forgot, sometimes I missed them and I would find it in the yard a few days later.

Snow used to run into the ocean and take big gulps of saltwater. In retrospect, I think this was a missed sign of her heart condition. Even when walking, she would just lay down in puddles sometimes. In about thirty minutes, explosive diarrhea. It could be in the car and often it was all over her coat. That made the trip home very challenging as well as knowing there was a nasty cleanup job ahead.

When my wife was in the hospital in 2010, several times volunteers came by with a therapy dog. No surprise, it was also a golden retriever albeit a much calmer and very nice temperament dog example of the breed. They offered in this in our recent stint in the summer, but I never saw a dog in the halls or heard that there was an opportunity. My point is that a good dog can even make us feel better.

End Your Programming Routine: So, Raya is not Snow, Raya is Raya. As much as she can be a pain in the butt, she brings some really nice qualities and leaves some that Snow had. When the going gets tough whether it is health or a shady situation, you want to be with the entity that has your back, always. For that reason, Raya is my ride or die.

August 29, 2024 – When You Get To My Age…

August 29, 2024 /

Last Monday, I did something that I have been waiting fourteen years to do. I put it off for three years and then I finally had it done. It was a colonoscopy. I am not unique nor do I think that I am going to provide a ton of new insight, but if you are dreading it like I was, maybe I can help you out a little bit.

When I was thirty-five, I was working with my dad. One day, he said “I had a colonoscopy the other day and they found some polyps. Because some of these problems can be hereditary, you should get checked too”. I told my doctor at the time and he said “You are a little young for that but we will keep it in the records for when it is time”.

My wife, the medical miracle has had several colonoscopies already. She started getting on me a few years ago to get one done. I got a referral in 2022 and meekly tried to schedule an appointment but post Covid, short staffing and other excuses got in the way. This appointment I originally scheduled in April for July but I moved it several times due to our other summer arrangements.

Everyone knows about the prep or at least I think they do. I am not going to get graphic about things. Even though I have been around it before there are still things I learned. This is what I learned.

My instructions said to take one dose of the prep liquid at 4 PM. I hung around pretty close all day not wanting to start anything I couldn’t finish. It was definitely nerves that was anxious with anticipation. It took an hour for the action to start. That is the first thing to know, it isn’t immediate. Then it was every twenty minutes for the next three hours.

My second does was at 11PM. Do the math, that means that I wasn’t able to relax until 3AM. Even then, I was worried that maybe the second dose would act differently than the first. My procedure was at 8M. This means that I got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep.

If I were to do things over again, I would not have followed the instructions to the letter. Since I had to eat a clear liquid diet all of Sunday, my preference would have been to start much earlier and then I could have ‘safely’ rested much earlier. As soon as they wheeled me into the procedure room, the next thing I got was a sedative and I was out like a light. The next thing I knew, they were waking me up in recovery.

I cant help but think of one thing that Kirstie Alley said. Her one regret is not getting a colonoscopy earlier before it was too late. Throughout my life, I have been as anti-putting anything up the butt as they come for any reason. I want to be completely honest, this process was not that bad. The prep was definitely the worst. And the worst part about it was starting it so late and having to stay up late. I was exhausted by the time it was over.

End Your Programming Routine: One last tidbit. I have personally observed chemotherapy causing the same side effects as the prep kit. And it lasted for days, not just 12 hours. So, if you are scared or don’t want to deal with the discomfort, consider the alternatives. I won’t be looking forward to the next one but this procedures are no big deal.