iTempted, iIndulge
Posted by Dave Minor Fri, 06 Jul 2007 18:24:00 GMT
Welcome to My Minivan
Posted by Dave Minor Thu, 10 May 2007 16:28:00 GMT
I’m glad to know there are others who share my frustration with how my vehicle looks.
The Flying Leap
Posted by Dave Minor Sun, 22 Jan 2006 03:05:57 GMT
Today marks the completion of a dream that I’ve had since childhood. One in which I know I share with a lot of people. I feel very honored to be able to say that, as of today, I am a private pilot.
It may have taken 8 scheduled days to get the winds to cooperate, but today was a beautiful day finally!
I spent the morning taking the practical test and hanging around the airport hoping to find an instructor on the field who had time to check me out in a larger plane then the Cessna 152 I’ve been training in. My hopes were to take my boys up this afternoon in a Piper Cherokee 140, but the schedules didn’t work out today. Probably for the better.
After lunch, I gave short rides to very special people in my life. First, I got to take my dad flying. He is the man who I got the flying bug from when he went through this process years ago. He hasn’t flown in about 15 years, and I was almost as nervous with him flying with me as I was with the examiner!
Next, I took each of my older boys, one at a time for a short ride over our neighborhood and through a couple of landings. They all had a good time. Sarah was taking care of the Kyle, so I’ll have to steal her away soon to go with me on a special day trip.
I noticed that Weston immediately figured out what the yoke controlled and how that would affect the direction of the plane in the air—even while we were on the ground. He’s definitely got some engineering blood in him!
Hopefully one day soon, I’ll have the opportunity to take you on a ride in the sky!
Programming with Foggles
Posted by Dave Minor Tue, 06 Dec 2005 15:20:47 GMT
In flight training, we use sight limiting glasses (called “foggles”) or a hood to block out the windows and force the pilot to fly by instruments simulating having flown into clouds or fog. It demands focus and attention on the task at hand.
I need foggles in my programming. It’s so hard to stay on task and complete the requirement. Not just from a “keep programming” perspective (ignoring email, phone, browser, IM, and making posts to my blog), but also from a “specific task” perspective (ie, “oh, it would be cool if it also did X. I’ll add that real quick then come back to this problem”).
Of course, this is all just discipline, something which I apparently lack unless I’m passionate about something. I’ve never thought that was really a problem for me.
It would also be great if I could have someone sitting beside me all day reminding me to check on things and pointing out my mistakes:
“Make sure you close that block.”
“Watch your tests.”
“What’s another way you could write that method?”
“OK, you just got hacked. What are you going to do now?”
The Real Reason the White Sox made the World Series
Posted by Dave Minor Thu, 20 Oct 2005 13:56:25 GMT
I left town. That’s right, we picked up the family and headed south. I’m not sure of the impact that really had on the Sox, but I have to think it probably had some effect.
Back in the spring, we both (Sarah has felt this way for a long time) felt a strong urge to move closer to family. Settling into a groove in Chicago for 9 more years would have been fine, except that the kids would not want to move as teenagers probably. Sarah found a great job in Hot Springs, AR, we found a great house and moved down in August. Hot Springs is a really neat town and we love it here so far. Having my folks 20 minutes away is great too!
During this process, we were shocked to find out we’re expecting our third child! So come first week or so of November, I’ll be increasing my tax exemption status! We’re excited and glad to be closer to family during this time.
The other news of the year is that I’ve moved away from PHP development and embraced Ruby on Rails as a framework to do agile web apps. This is cool for a couple of reasons. 1) Have you seen RoR in action?? and 2) This is a unified environment that Doug and I can both agree on for doing development together. He’s definitely still the smarter one, but it’s nice to have a common plane to develop on.
Birthday Rewards
Posted by dminor Mon, 17 Jan 2005 07:38:00 GMT
Typically, I have always used my Christmas/Birthday money for buying things that were left on my Christmas/Birthday list, but that I really needed. This year, the things left of my list were pretty prciy and I wasn’t finding a good way to use the money that wasn’t going to take a good chunk out of my pocket too.
Meanwhile, some friends showed us Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2 at their house and we’ve been sneaking over when they weren’t looking to play! so needless to say, in a week’s time, we’ve become addicted to DDR.
So it hit me last night that I could use my birthday money to buy a game system and DDR for Sarah and me (the boys have N64 downstairs, but I highly doubt that they’re going to want to play it much longer). Today’s purchase included a PlayStation 2, 2 Beat Pads, an extra game controller, and 4 games for the family.
I was hoping Ace Combat 04 would be a good flight game for the boys, but I think it’s going to be too hard for them for a while. I’m going to have fun with it until then. ;)
The big hit with the boys was Test Drive Off-Road Wide Open. I say no more.
Grandad enjoyed reliving our Ms. PacMan tournaments with a little PacMan World 2, but the best part of the night was getting him up to play DDRMAX Dance Dance Revolution. This little hobby is definitely going to have us putting window treatments on the front windows sooner rather than later!
This is the first game system I’ve ever owned that I’ve really cared about getting into. I’ve always kind of stayed away from games because I get pretty addicted to playing. I never had any systems liek Atari growing up. I bought a used N64 at a garage sale and have enjoyed playing it a little and going head to head with the boys on some games. This should prove to give us much room to expand as they get a little older. In the meantime, Sarah and I are going to use it try to get some exercise!
Where have I been?
Posted by dminor Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:45:00 GMT
It has been way too long since I blogged! My apologies. I knew that the longer I waited to start again, the harder it would be. I’ve got lots of excuses, but I’ll just sum it up by saying I’ve been very busy. Wanted to jot down a few things that happened since (before) Christmas so I can start blogging daily things that interest me.
We had a wonderful time at Christmas with lots of family visiting us. My folks were here over Christmas, and Sarah’s parents, brothers Mark and Ben, and new sister-in-law Monica were here over New Year’s week. We have some good memories like Gabe’s for breakfast, IKEA, and Reza’s New Year’s Eve.
I turned 30 on Jan. 3. and like always, everyone vanishes back to their own lives just before my birthday—my mother-in-law didn’t even have a birthday dinner like she usually does the night before we part. I thought everyone was just going to let it pass by. and I was bothered by that. I was excited about turning 30! She got me, and she would have gotten me good if they hadn’t called the house the day before to confirm. For my 30th birthday, Sarah gave me my first flying lesson! I’ve wanted to get my pilot’s license since my teen years of flying with my dad, but a) the money and b) her apprehension of small planes. I could not have a better wife! of course, both of those things are still an issue, but at least I have her permission now.
So since the New Year, life has been extremely hectic. I’ve been pushing a lot of deadlines (some self-imposed, some client-imposed). It hasn’t made for a cheery, happy home I’ll admit. I’m trying hard to focus my work time to specific hours of the day when the kids are not around so that when they are, we can have family time. It doesn’t help that Sarah’s been under quite a few deadlines too.
In tech news, it was a grand Christmas … my wife decorated my office with lots of great stuff that tie in my TiBook. A client gifted me with an iPod! A friend lent me his 5 string bass. Sarah got a GPS receiver for her Palm, but I can’t get enough space on it to run the thing. I’m working on getting my fileserver for the house setup and upgraded. The new server is colocated! I installed Panther on our computers (not the easiest upgrade for me). and Grandad got the red Jeep working for the boys!
I mentioned that the new server was colocated. That means that we are preparing to move all our client’s websites over. There may (hopefully not) be some slight downtime on this site and other’s that I host in the coming weeks. Taking the box to the data center was a thrill. I had to have my hand scanned. Any doors that you go through have to be opened with your hand scan. It’s very sci-fi.
Today I’m watching beautiful snow come down. We got 2-3” overnight and I think about that much expected today. G got to help me run the snow blower this morning. Hopefully we’ll get enough that W can help me later today. He was very disappointed that I was going to do it while he was at school.
Time to get some things done. Now that I’ve caught up, I hope to be able to post regularly again about whatever is on my mind at the time—if you care to read.I Excersize My Brain.
Posted by dminor Mon, 03 Nov 2003 18:09:00 GMT
I stumbled upon an article titled Why You Don’t Want to Date a Programmer by Arlo Leach about the complicated personality traits bestowed upon technical types. I like to think of myself as a non-geek programmer—able to relate to people on a pretty sophisticated level and interested in people, but I really think that’s just wishful thinking. I’m pretty much a geek (albeit one who can relate to people and take interest in them). What was nice about Arlo’s expose was that I can relate to so much of what other technical people notice about themselves. Particularly:
Programming is an almost entirely cerebral activity. The only physical component is typing—and not even that, when you’re just staring at the screen trying to decipher some code. Consequently, programmers tend to lose touch with their physical needs. They’re late for meals, they forget to wear a scarf, they don’t come to bed. Bringing food or drinks will be appreciated, when it’s noticed; just don’t suggest that some fresh air or a break will help move things along.
Life as I Know It
Posted by dminor Fri, 12 Sep 2003 06:05:00 GMT
I’m a night owl. I like being up late at night and sleeping until most people are at work. I struggled to get up on time for high school marching band. After my first semester at college, I refused to schedule a class before 9:00 a.m. Now that I have kids, I work after they go to bed. Life is good. er, Life was good.
My oldest started Kindergarten last week. To make matters worse, he demands to ride the bus. We have to leave the house at 7:15 to make the bus. That means 6:30 wakeup for old dad! Ugh! People who know me well will chuckle when they think of me going to bed at 10:00 p.m. to be able to make it out of bed at that time of the morning.
After a week, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m not sure how long that will last. I’ve tried reversing my schedule before. For now, I’ll just be consistent on my bedtime and hope for the best. Thank goodness for Diet Carbonated Caffeine in the morning!
Older posts: 1 2
