The big move

Now that I have headed down memory lane, I am finding it hard to stop, unless of course that some current dramatic event occurs that I must talk about.


Before I talk about our life in San Antonio a couple of years ago, I must give a background for our big move back to Texas. Over 10 years ago we made a big decision to leave the oil industry in Texas and return to the east coast and thus the move from Texas to North Carolina. It meant leaving my career in Geophysics for a pure software developer role. We settled into a brand new house in Apex that was one of the first houses built in that neighborhood. We had a buyer lined up for our house in Buda, Texas but at the last minute they backed out. We had to pay two mortgages for almost a year, which was really tough on the finances. It was a typical new neighborhood where the houses were very close together. We liked our house because it had no fence and the house behind us had one of the largest lots in the neighborhood so our tiny yard seemed pretty large.

Our kids loved to skateboard and rollerblade up and down the street with their friends, and I installed a basketball goal in our driveway for even more enjoyment. Soon we found our next door neighbors became very agitated at us. He did not like our kids walking on his perfect lawn. He also did not enjoy how our basketball would go into his lawn and little feet would retrieve it - trampling his precious grass. Soon after he put up signs on our side of his lawn, "Keep of the Grass". Like that was a good idea with some many young boys around! That was might as well have said, "Please stomp on the Grass". Soon afterwards we got a dog and when he caught the dog going to the bathroom on his grass, he called the Town of Apex to report us for letting our dog run around without any restraint. After four years in that house, we decided to move out where we could have some land to ourselves and be free from pesky neighbors. Next time I will talk about that small move within the Raleigh area.

almost dead

My daughter has a friend who is having her tonsils out soon. When I heard this it reminded me of an event in my own life when I was that same age. I used to get the flu yearly when I was a kid and it would generally knock me out for a week. One year was worse than all the rest. I need to digress a bi for more context. We had around 25 chickens with a single rooster. I would gather the eggs most mornings and each spring we would breed about the same number of chicks. About the same time of year I would get the nasty task of completely cleaning out the whole chicken coup. My mother realized my flu symptoms were related to my unwholesome chore, so I did not resist her insistence that I quit.

Before I stopped my chicken cleaning duties, I just could not get over my flu symptoms one year. I was on the local basketball team and we had a big game coming up which I could not miss. On the morning of the big game I had trouble getting out of bed as my stomach hurt so much I could not stand up straight. My mother took me to our family doctor 1 mile away and he had me rushed to the hospital 10 miles away (the distances are important). When I arrived at the emergency room, they rushed me into the operating room and quickly took out my appendix. I had gange green and my appendix had ruptured about 30 minutes before they removed it. Later the doctor told me I had come close to dying. The drugs I received gave me serious hallucinations that I still remember.

What does all of this have to do with tonsilitus? I shared a room in the children's ward with a girl who had her tonsils removed. I was in the hospital a week and so was she, so we got to know each other pretty well. It took me several days before I could walk on my own and she did not feel like moving either. We finally both made it down to the community room to watch TV and play games, which was a whole lot better than being bored in bed. I don't recall her name at all, but I remember she loved eating her meals of cold ice cream, when I didn't feel like eating at all.

From that day on, my mother used to tell me how thankful I should be that GOD had spared me for a reason.

to Lasik or not to Lasik

There was an article in the local newspaper this morning about LASIK eye surgeries that have gone bad. It brought back bad memories of that fateful day in the summer of 2000.

I started wearing eye glasses when I was in the 5^th grade. Well, I was supposed to that is. I could not see the blackboard in front of the room, so I went to the local optician for a checkup. I got glasses but was too self-conscious to wear them, so I stained to see the blackboard the rest of the year. I have always wondered if that was made my eye sight so bad. Every year for my annual checkup my eyes got worse. Finally when I was in college I tried contacts but I had a stigmatism so I could not see with soft contacts. I tried semi-permeable contacts and got severe eye lacerations, so that was the last time I wanted to put something in my eyes. I played football, basketball and baseball and seemed like I always had broken rims, which I often would tape to keep them together. I also did not like sweat pouring on my glasses and making it hard to see when playing sports. Finally when my glasses became too think to be comfortable, the technology improved to where the lens could be ultra thin, so wearing glasses was bearable.

When working in Saudi Arabia I made enough money to try goggles, which looked extremely bad but never broke when I got hit in the face playing basketball. In the land of freely flowing money, I had several friends fly to the capital of Riyadh to have RK done by one of the original Russian inventors, who worked for the king. When my eyes finally stopped changing yearly, we were living in the Raleigh NC area. I read in the loal newspaper that an eye surgeon who worked under this same Russian man lived in Greensboro and would be coming to Raleigh to start doing LASIK. I set up an appointment and at the last moment decided to have both eyes operated on. I was not really nervous as I trusted this doctor, for some odd reason.

On the morning of the surgery, I signed a release form that basically gave me no recourse if something when wrong. It was a bit scary on the morning of the surgery as I meant the other opthamologist, who programmed the laser. I wondered how he tested his calculations, since every person has unique laser settings, and he no one double checking his work! Once in the surgical room, even though I was sedated with Valium, I could smell my eyes burning as the laser sculpted my eye - that was not right! All of the sudden they stopped without saying anything and starting doing the same thing on the other eye. Then I could tell that they were doing things to my left eye they had not done to my right, so something had gone wrong. After they completely the surgery and had me wait with my wife for 30 minutes, the surgeon finally came in to check my eyes and told me what had happened. The flap on my right eye malfunctioned and they could not do LASIK on it, but completed it successfully on my left.

After arriving home and sleeping the rest of the day and night, I woke up to see a different world. My brain kept telling me - I could see and I couldn't see, all at the same time. My left eye went from 20-800 to 20-40 but my other eye with stigmatism was stuck back at 20-850. The biggest shock was that I had to wake 4-6 months before it could be corrected as the flap had to totally heal. I could not read a book, I could not watch TV, sunlight really bothered me, and I was night blind. I had to wear a black patch over my right eye in order to survive the daily grind. I found a way to work from home during this time, but the room had to be completely dark and I could not work longer than 45 minutes at a time as my eye got really tired. It the worst time of my life as it was depressing being a prisoner in my own house.

When 4 months passed I was able to have a second attempt to fix my right eye. It was definitely scary, but after 4 months of torture, I had to trust someone to fix my problem. The surgery was successful, but then I had a real problem of both eyes fluctuated but were normally 20-45 and my driver's license was expiring in a few weeks. In order to drive both eyes must be 20-40, so I was really wondering what would happen. I found if I got plenty of rest and did not strain my eyes in the morning and wore sunglasses when I went out, my eye sight was good. Somehow I got my driver's license by following these steps and within 2 years of my eye surgery my eyes were stable at 20-25 and my night blindness disappeared.

Thinking back, I don't think it was worth it, as I will be wearing glasses again as LASIK does not cure eye degeneration due to old age. I can only help friends become aware of LASIK problems as I cannot change the past!

babies vs. teenagers

I have decided that all newly married people should consider that their cute cuddly adorable babies may one day become hormonal teenagers. It was the furthest thought from our minds when our small children were amusing us with their feats of splendor.

For the last week, everyone in the family has been looking at photos we have saved through the years. It has brought many a laugh to us all. Maybe it is news of day, like our son quitting his job before he finds another or our son who has a bad habit of being loud and waking me up in the middle of the night or our youngest son who is one minute pleasantly happy and the next like an uncontrollable hornets nest. I think I like looking at baby pictures more than the current reality.

A good friend of mine told me once that we had no hope for calm obedient children as I have rebellious disturbing genes. I can recall those teenage years and glad I never have to relive them. I was definitely out of control and only a small group of faithful friends could stand me. I was only grief and trouble for my mother. My dad was not present as he left the house when I was 14. Just as well, as life was not any better when he was around. I only heard recently that dad got fired from every job he had and typically that was yearly. I always knew that following Jesus would be the cure for my nasty life, but I never even thought about the consequences of my genes! I think mixing my bad ones with my wife's at least diluted them as none of my kids are as bad as I once was - thank goodness.

When it rains it pours

The last couple of weeks have been crazy as I have documented in previous posts. This week is keeping the trend going strong. We had problem with the heat not working in the van on Friday. I told my wife to keep calm and not come up with ridiculous excuses to get a new vehicle. Yesterday I had to work from home since an A/C man was coming to check our heat pump system as something was not right. At 2:30pm my wife called me to tell me stream was pouring out from under the front of the van. That was odd since a friend had the weekend before "fixed" the van. At least he is a friend I can trust. When I arrived all of the kids were peacefully sitting in the van for the father-hero to show up. I checked the coolant since our friend had replaced the radiator and it was as dry as the desert. Fortunately, I had bought an extra jug of coolant an left it in the van a couple of weeks ago, so I poured what I had into the radiator. The nice thing about living in such a small town is that my mechanic friend's shop was less than a mile away! Then the A/C man said there was a problem with the humidifier as you are supposed to service them every year and it had not been done in the last 5 years. Wow, what else could go wrong?

Turns out a lot could, but only one other thing affected us the past weekend. We found out that our oldest son has been having all kinds of problems with his other three roommates. Two had been fired from their jobs and no one paid the utilities, so he paid for them all. He does not have enough money to pay for rent next month. He hates his job as he works long hours at Lonestar Steakhouse and gets few tips. Sounds like a fun life he has chosen! He called yesterday to tell us he quit his job, but thank goodness he found another job and started that one today at Walgreens.

So far all disasters have been diverted - we just keep loosing money in the meantime. Maybe we are building character to make us better people. At least I hope so.

Let's create a movie

For my sister's 50^th birthday present, her boyfriend paid to have 380 photo slides, our dad took of us when we were kids, converted to photo CDs at the local CostCo in Virginia. She sent them to me by UPS so I could amuse myself, since I was not able to make it to see her last weekend. I had a wonderful thought that I should load them all on my laptop and create a single DVD movie. How hard could that be? When I had my Apple PowerBook laptop, it would have been so simple. Now I have a lowly Windows Vista laptop, which changes everything. I read once that Vista had made this easier, so I was about to find out in person.



About half of the slides were taken when my dad flipped the camera sideways. Not a problem, I thought, as it must be easy to just load then and rotate them in the default Windows Photo Gallery program that comes with Vista. Turns out you just load the first photo and page them the photos using the right arrow button and when you see one that needs to be rotated, you just click on the rotate arrow, when you click to see the next photo, the rotated one is automatically saved. This is very nice and easy as it should be. Once I had all of the images correctly oriented, I had to figure out how to make a movie.

Right at the top of same Windows Photo Gallery window, is an icon with a label next to it of "Make a Movie". How convenient. When I click on this link, I see Windows Movie Maker come up with a single photo in it. It must be easy to just add all of the images. I see a menu on the right hand side that has a section labeled "Edit" and under that section I see "Imported Media", but it is grayed out and I cannot click on it. I delete the single photo and it is still grayed out. Then I notice in the toolbar at the top is what I need the same "Import Media" and this one is clickable. Then we hit the part of Vista I like and hate all at the same time. The file explorer window comes up with the default path set to "<< Users > rick > Videos >". I go to the folder on my 2^nd hard drive with all of the folders, and then multiple-select all of the JPG files and click on the Import button at the bottom. Now I see all of my photos in the middle of the window and thumbnails are automatically generated. I actually have all of my images loaded, so it must be easy to generate a movie now.



I have finally arrived at the fun part. I have used effects and transitions in many different graphical editors, like Adobe Photoshop. Under the same Edit section that I saw previously, now I see both "Effects" and "Transitions" listed. When I click on "Effects" I see a wonderful gallery that shows me all of the effects and when I select one a window on the right hand side shows me what the affect looks like in action. Very nice, but how do I use them? I see a small strip at the bottom of the window that is labeled "Storyboard". I drag a photo down on a film strip looking area and now I see my photo in the storyboard. Turns out there is a gray star in the photo thumbnail within the storyboard where you have to drag the selected effect. With transitions there are similar gallery images and those must be dragged onto the arrow icons between photo film strip thumbnails.



I must say that the overall user experience was really nice so far as I had constant feedback on what I was doing and Windows Movie Maker allowed me explore and try things out with undo that made sense. I clicked on "Titles and credits" and found even more fun things to play with as each title has animations attached to them as well. It is amazing at how easy it is to create professional looking movie affects.



So what is the problem? I have Windows Vista Basic, so it does not allow me to create a DVD. I was able to create a video CD with a WMV file, which works great, by clicking on the "Publish Movie" link in the toolbar. It brought up a dialog with "Recordable CD" listed as one of the options. I clicked on the link at the bottom, which said "How do I publish a movie?". In the help window that came up it had another link which said "To publish and burn a movie to a DVD", which is exactly what I wanted to do. When I open the link I see the bad news:

To publish and burn a movie to a DVD, you must have Windows DVD Maker, which is included in Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Home Premium.

I am sure there is a way but I am tired after trying all afternoon to find a way with freeware or shareware to do it. Too bad Microsoft wants to make me pay as I definitely don't feel like giving them any more money after today.

don't get lonely

Yesterday in talking to a friend about his life outside of work, I learned that his father's recent death was more painful after his death, as he has had to deal with the crazy woman he was married to. This really reminded me of the story of my wife's grandfather, as there are many similarities. I remember the first time I met granddaddy's wife, who cannot be called grandmother as that name is way too regal for her. She was standing on the sidewalk outside their house next to a folding card table with maybe 25 items of garage sale junk on it. That was odd enough, but what made it really strange was the fact that a 75 year old wrinkly woman was there in a skimpy bikini. I began to wonder what kind of family I as getting involved with!

I used to help granddaddy by mowing his lawn and tending to his fairly large garden or anything else he needed me to do. When I became thirsty I had to go in the back screen door to the kitchen, find a clean glass and get a glass of water. The word "clean" should be emphasized as that was really hard to do. Every time I opened the cabinets I would see tons of cockroaches scurry off in all directions. I would hold the glass up to the outdoor window and normally it would be full of fingerprints. My lovely wife had mercy on me most days and would come by with a glass of water from our apartment for real refreshment. I also remember the visits we would try to have in the evenings after strict refusal to eat with them at their house for supper. We would sit in the living room and watch this women smoke at least 2 cigarettes at the same time and somethings 3 of them. The ashes would drop on the floor as she did her hoop rug, right next to the puddle feces. They had very dated white shag carpet, which had to have all kinds of nasty things we couldn't even see.


Granddaddy was the most pleasant elderly person I have ever met, and it was so hard for us to figure out why he would marry such a loony woman. My wife's father was the only child in the family and has told us many times how neat and super clean his mother kept the house. The explanation he gives is that his father became so lonely after loosing his wife of many years. With so many fine and upstanding eligible women in his church, his loneliness overwhelmed him and miss crazy woman just would not give up. Granddaddy was the dean of agriculture for 30 years at VaTech (many people know him indirectly as they named Dietrick dining hall after him and he was known affectionately as "Deet") and had accumulated some wealth so that was an appealing factor as well. She was a companion for many years, but I would not say a good one and looking back she definitely was the topic of many colorful stories. When granddaddy died, his wife was removed from the house and on cleaning up the house to sell, a large sized U-Haul truck had to be used to remove all of her garage-sale purchased clothes which filled the house, including the basement. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. I am glad it is only past memories.

The moral of the story is don't be desperate and lonely as that is a bad combination.