occasional down time

Don’t be surprised if you see occasional downtime on my blog here over the next several days; the server on which it runs has been under attack by spammers for the last week and Geof (the trusty and generous hosting provider) is having the server wiped and then doing a full re-load this weekend.

Best wishes to Geof as he spends his weekend at a no-fun task.

The day I became Fred's hero

I don’t know what triggered this memory today… but I might as well tell the story while I’m thinking about it.

I was in my third year at LeTU when I got asked to be the pianist for some special music during chapel. Now, this was not an unusual request; by this time in my college life I had become the de facto college pianist, doing lots of special music, I was lead accompianist for the singing group, etc. On this particular day, though, the musical content was going to be a bit different.

My friend Mark Holmes, a phenomenal tenor in the Singers, was slated to do a special, and he was having a hard time deciding what to do. Finally, in a move worthy of a bad college movie somewhere, he chose to sing a “Christianized” version of the classic Johnny B. Goode. As I recall, the lyrics were totally cheesy; the chorus ended “go, Johnny, go - go preach the Word.” Yikes.

So anyhow, I had been recruited to play the piano to back him up; we also had a good drummer, a bass player whose name eludes me, and then Fred playing the guitar. Fred was a couple years behind me; he was tall and redheaded, with a beard and ponytail completing his wanna-be rock star image. He was pretty much a goofball when it came to music, which made him fun. He was thrilled to have the opportunity to prove his electric guitar prowess on this dubious semi-cover, and so our band was complete. We practiced a few times, and got it polished enough to be acceptable at the musical abyss that was LeTourneau.

The morning came for chapel and we were slated to do special music right before the message. We revved it up and did an energetic (if not totally polished) rendition, just as we had practiced. What I had not practiced, however, was coming down on a glissando down the keyboard (that sweeping motion where you just run the back of your fingers down the keyboard) and hit a black key the wrong way, and, lo and behold, the black part of the key just broke off. I’ve never seen it happen before or since. The wood was probably kinda soft in that key, and I just torqued it the right way. It’s the only time (to my knowledge) that I’ve ever caused damage to a piano by playing it.

When we were packing up our gear after chapel, I picked up the key and tossed it over to Fred. You’d think he had died and gone to rock-n-roll heaven - he thought it was the most cool thing that somebody had broken a piano while playing a song. I think every time we did music for chapel after that the subject came up, always with amazement and laughter. Fortunately for me, a little bit of Elmer’s wood glue was sufficient to fix the piano so the next pianist in line could have their E-flat.

The epilogue to this story is the memory that this wasn’t the last time I played Johnny B. Goode in chapel. A year or so later, an instructor at the school (also a talented guitarist, now a co-worker here in Iowa) was up for special music, and he chose to do Johnny B. again. He did the original version, complete with the word “hell”, which raised a few of the stodgy faculty eyebrows. :-) He introduced the song this way:

“Last week, a Romanian choir came and sang some traditional songs from their homeland. This morning, I’d like to sing a traditional song from my homeland.”

This time, I managed to keep the piano in one piece.

Sahara

Last night we had a babysitter available and so we went to the cheap seats theater in town and watched Sahara. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Clive Cussler. Becky and I are both huge fans of Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series, so we were looking forward to seeing what they’d do with his novel in the movie.

It’s beyond me why they haven’t tried to translate more of the Dirk Pitt series onto the big screen; for swashbuckling adventure tales, they’re tops. (The one attempt thus far, Raise the Titanic! may have discouraged others from trying… it was horrible!) Perhaps it’s the slight lack of realism… but wait, we’re talking about Hollywood here. Part of what makes Cussler’s books so fun, IMHO, is that if the hero is on a quest to find some mysterious hidden treasure, he finds it. None of this “oh it didn’t really exist at all but at least you had a good adventure” type of ending for Mr. Cussler. Nosirree. The hero gets the girl, drives a cool old car, wisecracks with his trusty sidekick, saves the world, and finds his treasure to boot. Realism? Who needs realism?

I wasn’t so sure about the casting of Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn as Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino. Fortunately, they suprised me. McConaughey was excellent, and they captured the fun-loving spirit and wise-cracking nature of the two characters really well. They interacted as though they had been friends for their whole lives (which, in the books they have been). My only gripe was that Zahn’s character was too dumb most of the time. I realize Steve Zahn has made a career out of playing “hi, I’m a doofus” characters. I wish they could have made him just a bit more heroic; in the books Al Giordino is just as much a thinker as Pitt; just with a different personality. That didn’t come through so well in the movie.

At the end, Becky asked “where’s the Clive Cussler cameo?” If you’ve read any of the books, you know that Cussler writes himself in with a small cameo appearance in every book. (Becky likened this to Hitchcock’s appearances in each of his movies.) It’s another one of those things that makes Dirk Pitt novels so much fun - when is Cussler going to appear? It would have been a neat nod to the books if they had written it in somehow… but it was not to be. I guess they can only base so much on the book.

All in all, it was a fun night out. And it was only Thursday. That almost makes it feel like a longer weekend, if it just wasn’t for the fact that I’m working today… :-)

A nice weekend

Normally I don’t do a lot of “here’s what I did with my weekend”-type posts, but it was a nice weekend, so since I need to update the blog I figured I’d just have to. Oh, first things first: my brother Ryan has decided to start a blog. Don’t know how much he’ll maintain it, but I’ve added it to the list of links on the right.

Anyhow, to the weekend. Friday night we got a babysitter and went out on a date. Nice to have some time to just be with the two of us after a busy week. We went to Chili’s and had ribs for supper, then went to Barnes & Noble to browse for a while. I bought a 2-disk CD album of Thelonious Monk and his quartet, Live at the “It” Club. I’d not listened to any Monk before, but a friend recommended him because of my love for Harry Connick, Jr. I was not disappointed. 2 1/2 hours of live club performance from 1964, digitally remastered so that it sounds great. I’ve been listening to it for the past couple evenings and it’s excellent. Forgot to bring it to work today so I guess it won’t make its way onto my iPod until tomorrow. So, after B&N, we went down to our favorite little coffeeshop and each had a cappucino smoothie. I sat and improvised on the piano for a while and Becky sat and read a book. What a nice way to spend a Friday evening!

Saturday we got up early and worked on an outdoor construction project. Becky has been planning on building some planters back behind the garage for the past several months; the landscape timbers to build said planters have been sitting on our patio for the past 6 weeks or so. Finally we had a free weekend to build. Finished those up by early afternoon. They will be really nice to have.

With the long weekend we got to enjoy Monday off as well. We did a bunch of cleanup in the morning, in preparation for having several friends over in the afternoon. It rained non-stop from 9:00 until 1:30 or so; we were afraid it might be too wet to spend time outside, but no, it dried out nicely and was beautiful. We invited Steve & Amanda and their kids, Ginger came as well (Daniel’s off to Amsterdam today flying freight), and then a new couple that just moved up here, Jeremiah and Rebecca. We had a great time getting to know them - they seem like a lot of fun, hope we can get to know them better. What I wouldn’t give to have them end up making Noelridge their church home… but they’re looking for a home in Monticello (30 minutes away) to shorten Jeremiah’s commute, so I wouldn’t place good odds on them coming to CR for church… oh well.

Now it’s Tuesday and I’m back at work. I’ve got a project certification plan document to update today. Fun fun. But it was a great, refreshing weekend. Thank the Lord for these times to kick back a bit and relax.

A little less wise

Thursday morning I had the delightful experience of having 4 wisdom teeth removed. It’s the first real dental work I’ve ever had to have done, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. But they needed to be removed, so I dutifully reported to the oral surgeon’s office at 8 AM, prepared for a weekend of pain and pills.

It’s actually been a lot better than I feared it would be. Thursday was still pretty much a loss, but I wasn’t in a lot of pain. Friday I felt pretty good. I probably could’ve gone to work on Friday, but I’d already prepared everybody for my being gone, so why mess things up for them? :-) It’s now Saturday morning, and my mouth is still pretty swollen, but I keep popping the ibuprofen, and other than that the pain is mostly gone. I’ll have to be careful what I eat for the next several days, but I can live with that.

The only thing I really needed to get done this weekend was mow the lawn, and so I’ve been figuring that by today I’d be ready to get out and mow. Well of course last night it had to rain, and it’s been threatening rain all morning, so I don’t think I’m going to get it done. Maybe tomorrow. I guess I could go outside and help Becky with her flowers…

This is probably the most boring random journal-type blog entry I’ve written in some time, but I guess it’s been slow enough that I don’t have much to post about. Either that or I’m just slow enough that I can’t think of anything… :-)

Cakeboy? Who the heck is Cakeboy?

In a comment sometime back, Amber asked about the whole House of Cakeboy title. While I may rename this blog at some time in the future, it’s still worth telling a bit of the cakeboy story by way of explanation.

It all goes back to a choir tour back in college. I was the primary accompanist for the LeTourneau Singers, who toured during spring and fall breaks with about 18 members, including accompanists and sound guys. We toured to Colorado during spring break during my freshman year, and, as it usually did, my birthday (March 14th) fell during the tour. We were out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant that night for my birthday, and after eating, they brought out a cake that somebody had bought, and sang Happy Birthday, and everything. It really was sweet of them.

Anyhow, after several pieces of cake had been cut and I had started eating mine, one of the girls (one of the semi-obnoxious ones) grabbed a bunch of the frosting from the cake plate, snuck up behind me, and proceeded to smear the frosting all over my face, in my hair, the whole nine yards. I was a mess, and none to happy about it, either. But I maintained my good humor, and cleaned up as well as a handful of napkins would allow. She then proceeded to call me “cake boy” the whole rest of the evening… which grew into the whole rest of the tour. Several other group members picked it up and it became my de facto nickname for the rest of the tour. When we went skiing later in the week, I had a tag to mark my skis, and marked it “cake boy”. I still have it laying around the house somewhere… a memory of good times. But that skiing trip is a whole different story.

After Singers (which I quit after my sophomore year), cakeboy started to fade into the oblivion of long-forgotten days. Some years later, I began interacting on an internet forum hosted by and for fans of the band Caedmon’s Call. I wanted a cool nickname, not just something boring like my computer login name. So I thought for a few minutes… let’s see… what could I use for a unique nickname? And then I remembered that ski tag. So, Cakeboy it was. Little did I know the fun that I was in for.

You see, on this particular message board, when they refer to sex, they don’t typically say “sex” - their pseudonym for sex is “cake”. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t realize this yet at the time I chose the nickname. You can imagine the jokes that came up. Actually, you don’t have to imagine - read the “Cakeboy joins the throng” thread and see for yourself. Finally one member took pity on me and let me in on the joke, but after a bit of thought I decided I could laugh at myself just fine, and so I kept the nickname. It’s been a perpetual joke ever since, but I’m OK with that.

So that brings us to the House of Cakeboy. It seemed the reasonable name for my blog when I got it started. I suppose sooner or later I’ll change it to something that won’t make people go “‘House of Cakeboy’? What the heck?” But for now, it’s a fun story to tell. Hope you enjoyed it.

Time to start studying

I have set upon a new endeavor at work: I am applying to become a DER. A brief explanation is in order, since probably none of my readers are familiar with the avionics industry and how equipment is approved to go on airplanes.

In the USA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has to approve every piece of equipment that goes on an airplane. The idea is that they can ensure that all aircraft are, by design, safe and airworthy. For software that runs on equipment in the aircraft, that software must be developed with rigorous standards and procedures, and then verified with equal rigor. (The relative rigor of the standards depends also on how critical the equipment is - less critical equipment needs less rigorous procedure and test.) Just for my company (one of the top two or three avionics suppliers in the world), and just in my department (flight displays), we probably request certification for half a dozen software releases every year.

The FAA realizes that they don’t have enough people to review every package in detail, nor do they have the time to stay current on all the new technologies and designs and processes. So, they choose to appoint engineers within the avionics companies as “designated engineering representatives” (DERs), and they give those engineers the authority to review and sign off on software releases on behalf of the FAA.

So, I’m applying to become a software DER. There are only about a dozen of them in our company (out of 10,000+ employees), and half of those dozen reach retirement age in the next 5 years. So, the need is great. I’m kind of at the bottom end of the experience required; counting my college training, I have 10 years of software experience - a minimum of 8 are required. I submitted my application packet yesterday. I will be going to a national DER conference in Norfolk, VA at the end of July, which should provide me with some valuable training. Then I will be studying the federal regulations like mad in preparation for a 30 minute panel examination by the FAA, likely to be scheduled for the end of September.

It will be a good move to become a DER; first of all, it’ll provide some variety in my work since I’ll be doing the DER stuff about 20% of the time, and my usual job the other 80%. It’ll give me visibility to other projects and other types of equipment that I might not learn about otherwise. It’ll make me just a little bit more indispensable, I suppose… and indispensable is a good thing to be.

I imagine I will post about my learning experiences here from time to time, so stay tuned.

I should have my geek status revoked

As I noted in my post to Mr. Murphy a week or so ago, I’ve been having problems with the new projector at church. I talked to the tech support guy today and we walked through stuff for 15 minutes, and he couldn’t figure anything out either. He left me with two other things to try, and if neither of them worked, then we’d send the thing back for warranty repair.

I tried the first, which was to send a composite video signal through. It worked just fine. So then I tried the second, which entailed getting the projector down from its stand and taking it into the office to hook it up directly to a desktop PC. Still no dice. At this point I’m pretty frustrated, and just sitting there thinking about what else it could be. I idly started playing with the rotary input control on the top of the projector, and all of a sudden - voila! It’s working! What could it have been?

The whole time I have been pushing the VIDEO button on the remote control, trying to cycle through composite video, S-video, and BNC. What I hadn’t been doing is pushing the RGB button right next to it. Arrrgh. As soon as I push that button, it switches to the RGB source, and everything works fine.

I should have my geek status revoked for a week or two for this one.

[Note to tech support: even if the guy on the other end sounds smart, don’t assume that he is. Remember that there’s a RGB button on the remote, and ask specifically if he’s using it. Even smart-sounding guys can overlook obvious stuff when it’s a new piece of equipment.]

new horizons in wife appreciation

Becky went to a women’s retreat this weekend. She left Friday afternoon and didn’t get back until Saturday night. It was my first real extended time of getting to “kid wrangle”, as Steve puts it. (Of course, he’s got three kids, so my one probably doesn’t really count…) I have gained an entirely new appreciation for the things my wife deals with on a daily basis.

I had 28-or-so hours that Becky was gone, and had one real task I needed to complete: the back yard needed mowed. That was just about all I got done while she was gone. Well, not quite all. I did get over to church to finish debugging the problems with the projector… and didn’t get anywhere. I’ll talk through it with tech support today. And I did spend a couple hours while she was napping Saturday afternoon watching the Cubs game. So I could have gotten a couple other things done. But still.

There’s this whole issue of how much stuff there is to remember with a kid; you have to remember to take the diaper bag everywhere, and to remember to refill it when it’s empty. And remembering to check (and change) her diaper often enough that she’s comfortable and not overflowing… And remembering to take the opportunity to change her diaper at the “family room” on the one end of the mall before walking all the way to the other end. And remembering to use the facilities before you leave home since it’s a real pain to try to park a stroller in the restroom next to you when you’re out… And remembering that mealtimes aren’t nearly so flexible for Laura as they are for me… 7, noon, and 5 are pretty well set in stone. And on… and on… I assume you’re getting the idea.

Laura and I had a good time while Becky was gone; we spent a lot of time together, and that’s good. I don’t get to spend as much time with her as I’d like to. But I’ll tell you this - we were both sure glad to see her get home. :-)

[a nod to Prof. Peter Schickele for a title I could play off of…]

boredom

This has definitely been one of those boring weeks, especially as far as work is concerned. As I wrote about before, I have been assigned to be the team lead for a new project. It’s not a particularly big or long project as our projects go, probably me and one other software person for 12 months. It’s becoming less scary as I get into it further; I’m understanding exactly what needs done, and I know I can handle it… I’ve done most all of it before.

The bad part this week is the boredom; we’re in a planning phase where our plan isn’t due until the end of this month. My project lead was on vacation all of this week and will be all of next week, too. I need her input to finish planning. So what do I get in the mean time? I have a bunch of half-finished spreadsheets that need her input and approval before I can finish them. I’ve had most of those done since the early part of this week. So I’m sitting here now posting on my blog, inflicting my boredom on you readers who are probably now bored reading this.

I hate having nothing to do. If I have tasks to work on, I’m a happy camper, the day goes fast, I’m ultra-productive, things are good. When I don’t have stuff to do, I go crazy. Time drags. Listening to music doesn’t seem to help. I can’t exactly sit here and read a book… although maybe there are some technical journals or FAA publications or something that I can read. Yeah, that’d be exciting. :-)

I don’t even know if I feel better after having complained here about my boredom… but it least I spent 5 minutes doing it… less than three hours until the workday is over….