Tag: Life

March 18, 2026 – The Cat’s In the Cradle

March 18, 2026 /

I was born in 1975. The era of folk songs was wrapping up. The Vietnam war was over, the youngest hippies were starting to grow up and become adults. The age of the Baby Boomer was accelerating at a rapid pace. Modern folk music was born out of political rebellion of the 1960s. It included artist such as Bob Dylan, The Beetles, Peter, Paul and Mary and many, many others.

It was melodically slower, much different than be-bop and the Elvis inspired Rock and Roll of the 1950s. It contained hard hitting messages about politics and culture of the time. Just because I missed it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t aware, it was all around me. My parents radio station was perennially tuned to what I would have called ‘soft rock’ of the era. We were not allowed to touch it without consequences.

I have heard this song a million times on the radio. In fact, when I was in grade school our music teacher even made us learn the lyrics during music class. It’s funny, you can know something and pay no attention at the same time. It wasn’t until much later that I actually realized that this was actually a song about my life.

I was in my second professional posting. I was actually working at the same company and building as my Dad. Even so, it could be weeks in-between seeing each other. I remember talking with my uncle one time and he was saying how nice it was that we could have lunch. I played it off by saying something like “yeah’ however I was kind embarrassed inside. We never had lunch together, let alone barely see each other.

My Dad invited me to join his elk hunting party and I made some excuse about how I didn’t have the time off accumulated. The group was primarily all people that worked in that office. That was the one and only time I got invited. The truth is, I thought that I would get invited again in the future since we were all peers of sorts. It was only this year that was the problem.

I moved on to another job the following year and got even more involved in my career. Now, I didn’t just not have time to go elk hunting but it seemed like I was barely home. Not only was I not spending time with my parents but I was also too busy working for my own wife and kids.

I didn’t just come across being a work first, father by accident. I had a good example. He was travelling for work a lot when we were kids. Occasionally, when he was home my brother and I would ask him to play catch with us. I remember how special I felt that he would actually do it. It was so rare that he would stop doing things that he was doing and just spend time with us.

The other day, my parents came by and helped us take a load to the beach. Really, they wanted to see this place that we were about to purchase. But, that is OK. He left a tarp behind by accident and I made a plan to drop it off with other errands that I needed to run. I really had a full day of packing planned but I ended up sitting down for almost two hours talking about computer problems and other things because Mom was gone.

The song Cat’s in the Cradle played in my head as I was sitting on the couch. I don’t know what it is with my drive to do things but it is very difficult for me to stop or postpone what I had planned to spend time with other people. It is not just my Dad but my Wife and kids and anyone else for that matter.

My wife is very fond of saying that I will never say on my death bed that I wished I had spent some more of my life working. That is probably true. In the same turn, I am not sure that I am going to say that I regret doing what I thought was the right thing to do. It has provided the life that we live and giving my family an opportunity to be who they want to be, not stuck in limited options. That being said, I do recognize that I need to be a more attentive and flexible.

One of my days off my wife insisted that I make a dinner date with my grandmother. This is another one of those times where I have been stressed about packing and the move. It turned out to be a really nice visit. I am pretty sure that there are not going to be too many more of those, especially when I don’t make the time. No promises but I am going to work on that.

End Your Programming Routine:

April 30, 2024 – My Life As a Country Song

April 30, 2024 /

No, my wife didn’t run off and my dog didn’t die. But, last week was a different kind of tough. The week before, I was dealing with the side effects of chemo and being a full time caretaker. But, we were mostly at home and sheltering in place. Last week as there was more getting out and about, it seemed like everything was going wrong.

My wife likes to say that I am ‘a glass half empty’ person. I don’t really think so. I like to think of myself as analytical and balanced. I like to see the full spectrum both good and bad. I suppose that to people who don’t like to see both sides, that is construed as negative. I fail to see how always being positive even when the odds seem low is a better trait that viewing the whole picture optimistically.

I say that because I am not complaining. I am going to get to a point by the end today. I think helpful advice is that we cannot change or dwell in the facts. My wife has cancer and we are doing what we can to combat it. All the ‘why me?’ in the world isn’t going to change a thing. It does however make life much more complicated.

This process is moving at an extremely disjointed manner. One day chemo is scheduled every other Thursday, then it is every other Friday. Take this medication before chemo, no don’t take it at all. Come in for this reason, no see this specialist. They are still doing diagnostic testing for goodness sake to determine if they are proceeding in the correct direction. Every conversation is musical chairs in who is running this process and is this information actually correct. This is the background for what I am dealing with.

Then, my son calls and says ‘my car has a problem’. He is about 45 minutes away. So, I have to drop what I am doing to go get him at 10pm. Due to a large coolant leak, I decide the best coarse of action is to have it towed home rather than risk a warped cylinder head. Imagine that I am trying to get my wife ready for an all day procedure that she is extremely nervous about while dealing with the tow truck driver at the same time because the car is locked and twenty minutes from the hospital.

The next day, my SSL certificate updates for altf4.co. Every 60 days this happens. But, it also follows with calamity. It seems like every time I go in there the user interface changes and I struggle with this process. I have come to anticipate the suck, but it does make it frustrating. This time I could not get the DNS provider to recognize my security documents. I tried and tried until I finally broke down and reached out to support. The problem was technical, I am not sure that there was anything I could do.

I was trying to setup my walkie talkies so that I could give one to my wife and I could hold onto one. This would give me some freedom to be out and about the house but still be in communication. This was the whole reason why I went through the licensing requirements that I talked about last week. One of them I couldn’t get to work. I bought new battery packs, I swapped batteries, no go. Finally, I took it apart to find some of the internal components fried.

No problem, I will break out my second set. They are not doing any good squirreled away in my emergency box for years anyway. One battery was dying, so I ordered new battery packs. Low and behold, there are a lot of aftermarket batteries that are similar but not the same on Amazon (even with the same battery model number). So, now I have two new batteries that don’t charge in my radios since I already opened them and threw away the packaging.

Last week it felt like everything was an obstacle. Everything I did had unintended consequences and nothing worked as planned. But, I want to go back to the beginning here. First, I don’t know what God has planned. I also know that I am handed scenarios that I can handle and learn from. As I am writing, things are getting better. My website is running, the batteries are cleared up, the problem is diagnosed with my son’s car and I think we have all the testing done and the path is clear on chemo.

More so than that, when things are not working right we just have to compartmentalize and be objective. Most of these things were not life altering problems. Take the problems and triage, then prioritize the work to solutions. The list might get longer before it gets shorter but we have to focus on the important things first.

End Your Programming Routine: To be truthful, I wasn’t exactly happy while all of these things were going on at the same time. But, being able to step back, it wasn’t huge problems. I suppose it is fortunate that more bad things didn’t keep happening at the same time. Mostly, step back and analyze the problems to the best of your ability. I am no electronics expert but I can see and understand burnt capacitors, Time to cut your losses and move on.

August 29, 2022 – Back To School… Drama

August 29, 2022 /

My kids are a little over a week away from starting school again. You can listen about the drama that I am talking about. I was going to use this slot to tear a new one into the school system but as I was writing the outline, I thought that I could turn that around into something more constructive. So, that is what I did.

End Your Programming Routine: I think sometimes that if we don’t think critically about a situation, we can forget our power and role in the situation. Change your mindset so that it is not what the world is doing to you but how you respond to the world. That is mastery of yourself.

June 29, 2021 – The Morning After and the Calm Before the Next Storm

June 29, 2021 /

Over the course of the last week, several events have been top priority, the weather, family events and my anniversary. Much of that comes to conclusion today. One of the most bizarre weather phenomenon happened yesterday, a return to normal.

At 1pm yesterday, I went to go get flowers and it was hot. Both the thermometer and the weather app said 108. By 2pm the thermometer said 111 and by 2:30pm it was reading 115. It was supposed to be cooler and the forecast said it was coming, but when?

It turns out that was the peak, because by 6pm the temperature was down to 85 and by 8pm it was down to 72. In the course of six hours our temperature dropped over 40 degrees.

When I say normal, I mean that it is normal to be highly scheduled because Fourth of July is this weekend. The Boy Scouts have a bunch of activities planned Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The annual children’s play performances will occur Thursday, Friday and Saturday (my son is in the lead). There are other family activities still to come like my mother-in-laws birthday party today. At least the temperature will be in the eighties.

Yes, they were already working on the hotel at 6:30am this morning. But that was the view of the serenity from our room. So you could see the serenity of the location. In a few short days there will be fireworks going off and throngs of crowds (to the left of the picture).

I think that we as parents want to give our kids the best experiences that we can. That includes enabling participation in all of the extra curricular activities. Especially after last year. Even though I went out of the home to go grocery shopping and miscellaneous errands, I think that my kids were homebound from mid-March through late April until we went to the airport to drop off our exchange student.

Most of the traditional activities were cancelled like summer camp, youth groups etc. Maybe I just notice it more because it was so quiet for so long and now it is return to normal with activities. Or maybe they are more involved because they are at the age where they can be. I am not totally sure.

End Your Programming Routine: I know at some point my wife and I won’t necessary have to escape to a hotel to spend time together. It doesn’t make the fact that we have very busy schedules easier, but it does mean that we took the time despite all that was going on to be together. Fantastic evening.