Harry's Ruminations

Background: I have a 6 week old infant daughter. In an ongoing effort to avoid sleep deprivation psychosis, my wife and I now alternate "standing watch" for Grace each night. Last night was my night. Man, a day that ends at midnight and begins at 4:30 sucks. Really could've done with another hour of sleep at least. Still, it beats Sunday night/Monday morning, at which time my daughter went to bed at 11:30, then woke up at 2:30 and screamed the next 18 hours.

Yes, I've caught the blogging bug. I feel different enough from my former self that it seems to make sense. Maybe I'm reading too much Peter Egan these days. Whatever, I'm here, again. This weekend was another hole in my soul weekends when Joey gets to go to Louisville to be someone else with Dad #1. This is not how he phrases it, but that's it in effect. From my perspective, I drop him off @ 7pm Friday, he goes into a fugue state for 48 hours, then I pick him up at 7pm Sunday. In any case, it kills me, as Joey's my only defense against the giggly, shopping, toe-painting brigade known as the Combs Women. Actually, I overstate. The women of my family are wonderful, well-rounded folks. Still, they're women, and it's difficult to crack jokes that begin and end with "poop," "balls," or "fire." With them. Joey and I could do 10 minutes of standup on the word "poop" alone. I think of us as the two stooges. Ahem, a...

From time to time, I like to check-in on what daily life is like. Yeah, it's mundane, but it helps me remember what I was like at any given moment. 5 am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar. 5:09am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar 5:18am: Alarm Clock Goes off, wakes 6 week old infant. Wife hits me. I turn off alarm clock and get up 5:30->6: Wash dishes from night before, read RSS feeds on Google Reader, listen to podcasts on iPod (particular favs: "Things you missed in History class", "FLOSS weekly", and "Wait, wait...don't tell me".) 6: wake-up Joey for school, walk him to the bathroom. 6:15: go back to bathroom to rouse comatose Joey 6:30: Shower, shave, yada yada yada 7:15: Leave to take Joey to school 7:45: Pick up Del for carpool 8:15: Arrive at work 8:30->10:30: Most productive time of the day 10:30: first SCRUM standup of the day. Dysfunctional, slightly dramatic team. Lots of contempt. Good product, though. 11: second SC...

Inspired by @tr0x on Twitter.com , here's my anti-bragging list @ age 32. I suck at most anything sports related . I'm egotistical and I hate to lose, from which naturally follows I never liked being on any sports team. I was on a T-Ball team when I was 6. I played right field, couldn't catch a ball to save my life, and that team ended-up winning the league championship. I chose to retire on top, you might say. I'm physically incapable of cleaning a bathroom adequately . Sad, ain't it? Invariably, I start a project, get 25% to 75% through it, then let it languish until it's overdue, then half-ass it to the finish . Yes, this drives me nuts about myself. I've no idea why I do it. Yes, it makes my longsuffering wife want to kill me. I suck at simple arithmetic, particularly that done in my head . Love higher math, but simple addition and subtraction is like kryptonite. I'm almost phobic about it; I have nightmares where I run a cash register an...

I was in a training class last week, and thought these quotes were interesting: Game time is not the time to improve skills. It's the time to apply the skills. Projects have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Operations go on forever. Marry not the person that makes you happiest, but the person that makes you least unhappy. Metrics allow you to get rid of the losers. They DO NOT let you pick the winners The difference between a job and a career? About 20 hours a week.

I'm 31, and I have arthritis in my lower back. THIRTY ONE YEARS OLD. Mom's prophesy has come true: "You need to get up and move, or you'll have arthritis by the time you're 30." You were off by one, mom. Can't really lay blame on anyone but myself here. I'm the one who decided sitting around like Jabba the Hut for the last decade was the way to go. Twenty six percent body fat, zero flexibility, and no core strength. Sorry, this is my first "you'll have this for the rest of your life" moment.

I've been pulling lots of OT at work lately (as has my whole team) and this past week, the walls started closing in on me. That's appropriate--I work in a windowless lab surrounded by high-walled cubicles and machines that wouldn't pass FCC Class B certification with a bribe and a reactor radiation shield. Our lab has a sign with fake (?) blood on it that says: "Stress relief: Bang head here." Anyway, my manager strongly suggested some time off. As did my wife. As did the janitor. So, I took today off and took Maria to see Toy Story 3 , the latest computer-animated masterpiece from Disney/Pixar. Okay, so our family is a Pixar family. We often don't speak English; we speak in citations from Pixar movies, our favorite being Finding Nemo and Cars Nevertheless, after suffering through the turdly Shrek: Somebody Shoot Me a month ago, I was gunshy about walking into the 3rd installment from this franchise. Where could the story go? To another plane of exis...