Home Improvement and Frustration

I spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening trying to get our new dishwasher installed. Three connections: electrical, drain water, and hot water. Two of the three were simple and straight-forward; it was the hot water that just wouldn't co-operate. For reasons I don't understand, the connector at the end of the line just wouldn't catch on the threads of the dishwasher. Literally hours and hours of laying on my side getting more and more wet as I try to get these two parts to connect. By hour nine I had finally gotten it all together and was ready to test it.

The copper tube behind the washer had kinked as I was pushing the washer in. I would have to take it all apart to replace the kinked line. Sigh.

It is hard for me to express the level of despondency I felt as the day wore on. Just three connections, that's all and it seemed like very little was going my way. I couldn't find the right fitting,I damaged the fitting, the stores were all closed, the joint leaked, my wrench wouldn't fit... By dinner time, I was feeling completely demoralized. It was by the grace of God that I kept at it and was able to "finish" the project that evening. (Only to find that I wasn't finished at all.)

I think I have found the magic formula for personal demotivation: establish simple and achievable expectations and then fail to meet them in every way. Expectations are so key to getting me frustrated and (eventually) in despair. When I feel that I should be able to accomplish something, especially something that I think is simple, I lose hope when I fail to make rapid progress. Ironically, it is much harder to frustrate me with complex, long, or difficult tasks because I expect there to be trials along the way. Simple things made hard are aggravating.

This is one reason I switched positions at work. In my previous position, I would be assigned a simple task, usually a minor engineering change to some part of the aircraft. I would be excited because the technical part of the task was simple and I knew I could complete it quickly. And I would. Then would come the hours of paperwork necessary to get that change approved. Frustration in a bottle.

Ignorance of the details of a task also contribute. I look at the dishwasher and I see three things I need to do. In reality, there are twelve steps but I think the other nine are hardly worth mentioning; they're simple. When these nine tasks end up taking a lot longer than I expect, I get frustrated.

I think this home-ownership thing is going to be character building because I can see "simple" things like this are going to continue to pop-up. And they will probably appear simple until the little details start taking a lot more time than I would have guessed. I think I'm going to praying a lot more now and trying to remember that I'm not the one calling the shots and this is all in God's hands. Maybe I won't even get frustrated.

Smooth Move

Thanks to the efforts of a dozen or so of our friends, our transplant from a rental to our new home went very well. Faster than I would have imagined, actually. We started at 10 am and finished up right as the pizza arrived at 1 pm. Katie and I had done a pretty good job of packing and the gals that showed up make short work of what we hadn't got to. It only took two U-Haul trips (plus about ten car loads from our helpers) to get it all done.

There's actually not much more to say than that. Much thanks to all those who helped; you made a laborious task easy.

The Big Day

My absence here for the past few weeks has a legitimate excuse this time (unlike many other multi-week breaks): my wife and I are closing on a house tomorrow morning.

The process has been very quick by nearly every standard. We will have gone from deciding to look for a house to buy to actually owning one in nearly exactly four weeks time. Two of those weeks have been between having an accepted offer on the house and inking the paperwork tomorrow. We've spent hours looking, inspecting, doing paperwork, arranging financing, and lately, packing.

The house we are purchasing we toured our first night of visits with the realtor; it was the ninth of ten we planned to visit that night. Our realtor is a former home-builder and he was impressed with it (as were we) so we decided to go back the next day to get a better look at it in the daylight. By the end of that visit, we decided to put an offer on the house and found out that evening our offer had been accepted.

The next few weeks were spent working out the details of financing, having the official home inspection done, and getting all the ducks in a row. There have been a few stressful moments, the most recent of which involved trying to get a check to clear quickly so that the necessary funds could be in the correct account, but it looks like all the detail-work is done.

We are thankful that God has provided a house for us and thankful that we are able to afford it. Now we are going to be praying that we are good stewards of the gift we have been given and don't let our lives fixate on home improvement. We want our house to be a tool to bless others and not the penultimate obsession in our lives.

Anyway, as of tomorrow, our little slice of the earth can be found right here. We'll post some pictures and maybe even some video of the new digs.

It's Here!

This evening I will walk into the downtown branch of the Wichita Public Library, plunk down one shiny quarter, and receive a two week loan on the final Harry Potter book. This is the first time I've paid to use the "hold" system at the library and I only did it because I figured, even with 100 copies in circulation, my chances of finding this insanely popular book actually on the shelves in the next few months was pretty slim.

Now I just have to find the time to read it.

Corporate IT

For the entire time I have worked at Cessna (2.5 years), I have had a wimpy computer. For whatever reason, when I started I was given a computer that was handed down to me from a administratice assitant. It was slow. Very slow. The monitor was a dark 17" CRT. Nearly all the other engineers had flat panel displays and took advantage of their "superiority" to let me know that my status on the nerd totem pole was not that impressive.

That has all changed.

Due to the system requirements of some new software we are using, our group is getting their computers upgraded and mine was the first to arrive this afternoon. Dual 20" flat panel displays. Eight times the memory I had before. Four times the processor power than that previous pokey computer. I sit at my desk and see a wide swath of computing expanse and have the power to move through it. Its great.

The only downside is the inferior upgrade procedure we have in place. I will probably be spending several hours tomorrow installing a bunch of software and drivers so that I can get back to doing my job. For whatever reason, the IT people don't feel it is their responsibility to deliver the computer in a usable state; they copy over some of the data but not all of it. I've already spent a few hours on the phone with tech support trying to get the access rights I need to re-install the software I need to do my job.

Maybe tomorrow will go more smoothly.

Hall of Fame

This past weekend Katie and I went down to Oklahoma to be present for a unique ceremony; Katie's father was being inducted into his high school football hall of fame. I know it meant a lot to him that we were able to make it and though I'm still learning about "football culture" and was a bit over my head, I was gald we were able to make it. Now I have a father-in-law who is a (high school football) Hall of Fame Inductee. That's pretty cool.

Fillings

I knew this was going to be a different visit to the dental office when the good doctor told his assist, “Can you go get the diagonal bit for me?” Actually I knew since my check-up a month ago that this day would come: my first filing. Despite my diligent efforts to keep my teeth clean (brushing several times a day, flossing nearly daily), a fancy gadget during my last visit identified two teeth in need of filing. It ruined my day.

So there I was, getting my first fillings. Before we got into it, I asked the dentist what I could do to prevent cavities. The answers were, unfortunately, not very helpful. He explained the difficulties in cleaning the molar surfaces (where these cavities were) and said there wasn’t a lot more that could be done more than diligent brushing. Unlike some other dentists I’ve had in the past, he wasn’t super excited about the electronic toothbrushes (Sonicare or Oral B) but said they do help. Sigh.

The procedure got off to a great start. The fancy gadget used to test my teeth for cavities tested negative on one tooth this time which meant fewer fillings (and a chance to redeem myself). Though I have never had a painful dental experience, I think I inherited our cultures fear of dental work that morning and was apprehensive. I had nothing to fear. A topical anesthetic masked any pain associated with the injection that numbed up half my mouth. When my mouth was sufficiently immune to any prodding and poking, the dreaded drill came out. For the next fifteen or so minutes (longer than it took for the anesthesia to do its magic) I had four hands in my mouth, each with a tool. The dentist and assist hardly communicated at all; it seemed a very routine procedure (no surprises = a good thing).

In about 45 minutes or so, it was all done. The assistant said the filing sets up immediately so I could eat right away. Well, almost right away; until the anesthesia wore off, there was no way I was going to be able to chew straight, much less taste my food. I ended up having to wait nearly three more hours before I felt comfortable eating without risk of biting my lips, cheek, or tongue. No residual pain, no difficulty chewing. Now all I have to do is stay on top of the brushing and hope we won’t have to do that again any time soon.

Fun New Word of the Day

"Bridezilla."

I heard an interview with a gal in the midst of planning her own wedding use this term. Her definition was simple: if you use the phrase "Its my wedding!" to make sure you get what you want then you are a bridezilla.

I wish I would have known this term these past few years when it seemed I was going five or six weddings per year; it would have come in handy.

(By the way, the interview was on my favorite personal finance radio show, American Public Media's Marketplace Money.)

I'm Fat

There’s no two ways about it; I’m fat. By any measure I can think of, any website I check, any “authority” I can dream up, I’m overweight. I’ve even gone as far as to ask my male friends who are roughly my height how much they weight and invariably it is at least 20 lbs less than I do.

In Idaho I biked to and from work nearly everyday. This definitely helped me stay relatively fit but even then, I always had a layer of squish around my waist and I never weighed less than 185 lbs. I think people thought of my as “healthy” and maybe I was but compared to my roommates who could out-run, out-climb, and out-bike me; I never felt it. I also didn’t compare favorably with my immediate family in this department; I am easily the least athletic and most pudgy of my siblings.

In early fall of 2005 I had a back injury that eliminated virtually all activity in my life. Though I had been bicycling to work, I was forced to quit and spent most evenings after work laying down trying to mitigate the pain. Through physical therapy and a few steroid injections, I gradually regained some degree of activity in my lifestyle but didn’t jump back into it quickly. I had grown used to do doing nothing but lying around and any benefit from years of bicycle commuting was quickly being erased. By the end of the summer in 2006, I had finished up with physical therapy and was probably back to 80%. I still couldn’t bike to work, though, and didn’t lead an active lifestyle outside of the back exercises I continued to do at home.

It wasn’t until a chance meeting with a scale late that fall showing me at 214lbs that I decided I needed to do something about this. I brought this topic up with my wife and, due to her own fight with familial weight problems, agreed that we needed to do something about it. We read books. We started exercising together. We became more careful in what we ate. And we lost weight. Not in the cataclysmic volumes that the books said but we both noticed that we left healthier and weighed less.

Then Christmas came and though we didn’t gain any weight, we didn’t loose any either. Due to a lot of factors, we reached a plateau of sorts and both of us have felt that we are still a good ways from where we need to be. After talking this over again and trying to figure out the best thing to do, we’ve decided to take things up a notch. We’ve developed an exercise schedule that is more active and we’re trying to find ways to measure the level of activity during exercise. We’ve decided to attempt a super disciplined approach to what we eat by weighing and cataloging ALL that passes through our mouths. We’re hoping that by measuring more carefully the food we eat and our level of activity we will be able to more clearly see where the faults in our lifestyle lie.

The catch in all of this is that it will require a high degree of discipline, one that we aren’t used to enacting in this area of our lives. Some would say that this regimented approach is simply setting ourselves up for failure and that most people aren’t able effectively stick with a program like this. Those people are probably right. My wife and I have discussed this at length and agree this will not be easy. But then again, for us, leading a healthy lifestyle never has been. If it was easy, we wouldn’t need to do this.

So this is where we start, again. This week has been a practice week of sorts where we are on our new exercise routine and beginning to weight and measure our food portions. Next week, we begin it for real.

If you believe in luck, then wish us luck.

Bicycling to Work

For the first time since my back injury, I bicycled into work today. Well, that's not quite true. This past Sunday I did a trial run in the evening to get a feel for how long it would take. That trip was 97 minutes round-trip with a few minutes break in the middle at work. The route I took was non-ideal (despite some of it being officially a bike path) and so today I tried a different, more residential route. You can see the two routes here. My time bicycling to work today: 39 minutes. I don't think I'll be able to bicycle everyday but the success from today makes me think this should be a pretty vialbe form of exercise.

The main difficulty will be the fact that Cessna's eastside gym (the Cessna Activity Center) doesn't open until 8am and there really isn't a good way to get between it and the office. Result: I'm giving myself "washcloth showers" in the handicap stall before work. When I bicycled out to the west-side facility, the gyn was right across the street and was open by 6:30am when I arrived. Those were the days.

Bad Day

My scooter was blown over by the wind during the work day and dented a car parked next to it. I left a note for the owner but haven't heard back from him or her.

I went to the dentist this morning and found out I have two small cavities that will need filling. These are the first cavities I've had. Despite my recent efforts to be very diligent in flossing and brushing, I still lost. Apparently I'm doing something wrong.

Sigh.

I wish today had gone differently.

God Cancelled Church Today

This morning, in the middle of church, the tornado sirens went off. One of the church security guys quickly ducked out out of the service to verify (somehow) and came back in to report that, yes, the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for our county. The pastor told everybody to round up their kids from children's church upstairs while they figured out the best course of action. Again, by means I know not of, they were able to ascertain that there were no active tornados in our county and decided it would be best if everybody went home as a preventative measure. I overheard the pastor say that if our church had a basement, we probably would just go down there and continue as normal.

I was talking with the sound guy about this while we were waiting for more information to be gathered and he wished the National Weather Service wasn't so cautious. If he was running the show, he said he would only active the sirens when an actual tornado was seen rather than just when there is rotation in the clouds (as was the case this morning). His point was simple: the high number of "false alarms" encourages people to disregard the sirens when they do sound.

His point is a good one and my complaint regarding the system is similar: our finest level of resolution for warnings is an entire county. There could be a very deadly tornado dozens of miles from me and the sirens will still go off. In fact, the National Weather Service could be virtually certain that there is no danger to all of Wichita but if there is danger to some part of the county, the sirens will sound.

For better or for worse, most people respond to the sirens by first turning on the TV or radio rather than seeking shelter immediately. In a city that deals with dangerous weather frequently, ALL of the "serious" local TV stations have invested a great deal of money in their weather forecasting equipment, sets, and staff. You can be sure that if the sirens have sounded in Wichita, every one of these stations will be carrying a very in-depth and seemingly interminable analysis. It won't take but a few seconds to figure out what course of action is appropriate.

Lastly, one of the things I brought to our marriage was a Midland weather radio which has been serving us well these past few days. Every hazardous weather watch and warning issues by the National Weather Service sets this thing into loud beeping mode followed by automatically tuning in to the continuous National Weather Service weather channel where the cause of the alarm is explained. The radio is great; even if a tornado came late at night, we would be immediately awaken. On days like today, though, when National Weather Service is issuing warning after warning, it can be quite annoying.

The other advantage of having this radio is that we are never in need of the latest weather forecast, current weather conditions, or weather almanac entry for the day. We have "Misty", our friendly speech-impediment prone, computer synthesized voice who is vigilant in keeping us up-to-date and tirelessly, hour after hour, provides the latest in weather related news. Even during slow weather days, we sometimes tune into Misty to hear her mispronounce words; our favorite is "cloudy".

The Mystery Of Ants

Now this is the kind of research paper I would like to write. Check it out. This guy figured the best way to learn about the physical structure of an ant colony was to pour liquid plaster down it, let it set up, and then dig out the casting. Reading into the article a bit, it sounds like molten metal has also been attempted with varying degrees of success. Fun quote from the article: "Pouring red-hot aluminum in the bottom of a 2-meter pit runs the risk of having ones socks catch on fire from the radiant heat."

I read the abstract of the paper but not the full article itself. For best results, scroll down to the bottom of the article for all the neato pictures. Here's the first and most eye-catching:

Jeff Wenzel

This past weekend a prominent member of our church passed away after fighting a brain tumor for four years. Today was the service for Jeff Wenzel and I was glad to be a part of it. There are a lot of trivial things I could say about the service today and maybe I will some other time.

One significant truth became more clear to me today, though: the repeated Biblical command to care for the orphans and widows is a significant and needed service in the corporate Body. Though I have read it many times throughout Scripture, the reality of what this means moved from a mental exercise to living practice today. Jeff's three children no longer have a biological father to provide for them. The role of fathering, for now, has been passed on to our church body as a whole. I don't know what kind financial provisions are in place but I know a trust was established to help with the education of his children. As one of the pastor's at the service said, "It is appropriate to donate generously." This is probably one of the most significant ways my wife and I will be able to help Jeff's family.

Ironically, Jeff and another member of our church founded an organization here in Wichita ( Youth Horizons ) geared towards mentoring the fatherless children of Wichita. I pray that God will provide good father-figures for his children.

Name That Dot

Just recently I was able to do something I've wanted to do since I moved to Wichita: I used the telescope at Lake Afton Observatory to take a photograph of the heavens. One evening a month the observatory allows anybody with a camera to come and use the telescope for photographic purposes. The subject for the evening is pre-selected and the staff at the observatory provide the hardware you need to connect the camera to the telescope.

Part of the reason it has taken me this long to participate in the program is that it usually takes place at 11pm Sat. night; this is WAY past my bedtime. Additionally, the weather has also stymied a few past attempts. Things worked out great this month, though, as the skies were clear and the shoot started at 8:30pm Sunday night.

As for the quality of the photo, well, I don't have a ton of excuses. It was my first time on the telescope so that didn't help. The heat of the day rising off the cooling ground also added a lot of, uhmm, shimmer making a nice, solid, National Geographic photo pretty much out of the question. Plus, this particular subject is quite a ways away so even through the telescope it wasn't very large.

The mystery object: Venus.

The observatory is doing also Jupiter and Mars this year but I think I may hold out for the moon as I expected the shots to turn out much better.

Stillwater Don't Need No Netflix

This last weekend my wife and I were down in Stillwater, Oklahoma for a two-year old's birthday party (cute pictures to follow soon) and afterward spent some time with my wife's brother, Ben. We decided to watch a movie and Ben suggested we stop by a local video store there in town called "Video Vault". Ben thought I would like the place and he was absolutely right.

Probably the simplest way to describe Video Vault is by saying it is a specialty video store. You could also say that Video Vault is the exact opposite of Blockbuster; in the way that Blockbuster promises to have all the latest greatest movies in stock (or at least they used to), Video Vault "promises" to have a whole bunch of old, odd, and unusual movies you may or may not have heard of, like, say, the Academy award winner for best picture from 1962. They got it. Its in the in "Academy Award" section which is near the "Anime" section which is near the "Organized By Director" section which is near the "Blacksplotation" section which is near the "Date Movie" section which is near the "Rent At Your Own Risk" section (whatever that is).

I'm a Netflix member so that I have access to virtually all the movies found in these sections that don't really fit the summer-blockbuster mold. If I had a store like this in Wichita, I would probably quit Netflix; Netflix provides by mail what this store provides in-person.

By the way, if we have a store like this in Wichita, it isn't in the phone book. We've got Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, a locally owned Blockbuster wannabe, and a bunch of "adult" video stores. (Why does the preface "adult" seem to connote "vice". "Adult beverage" = alcohol, "adult gaming" or "adult entertainment" = gambling, "adult video" = sex and pornography. Kind makes being an adult seem like a license to sin rather than the obligation to be responsible.) This being the case, I'm adding this to my list of potential things to do with my life: open a speciality video store in Wichita.

Rolling Again

After nearly six weeks of being out of commission, I recently got the flat on my scooter fixed and it is up and running again. What I thought would be a relatively simple task (hey, it SHOULD be) of replacing the rear tire turned into a lengthy ordeal. I knew that it would take a bit of work to get the wheel off due to things like the muffler, rear suspension, and rear brakes mounted in that area. When all was said and done, it took two visits from the mechanically inclined friend, borrowing a specialized tool called a "gear puller" from the auto parts store, and taking off a sizable portion of the rear body and seat compartment.

Ironically, there ended-up being nothing wrong with the tire; no punctures or holes of any kind. I took it in to the motorcycle shop, we ordered a new tire, and they called me back a few hours later to say the existing tire was still holding air. I ran back to get the wheel and when I tried to put it back on, I discovered a fully inflated tire can not be squeezed past the engine block to slide all the way down the axle. (This scooter is quickly earning low marks in my mind when it comes to maintainability.) Letting out some of the air and whacking on it with a rubber mallet got it back on. In a few hours I had reassembled the bike and took it out for a test ride: all was good again.

This experience has also brought to light just how poor the quality of this bike is. Several of the bearings I had a chance to inspect in this process are starting to stick and the gear meshing at the rear wheel-axel is fairly loose. "You get what you pay for" and that has played out true here as well. Fortunately, I suspected nothing less from the low price I payed and plan on making the most of this opportunity to become a more knowledgeable mechanic.

This attitude will serve we well in the near future as there is a funny rattle I need to hunt down and a front headlight that needs to be replaced.

No rest for the weary. Or those who buy cheap scooters to save a few bucks.

Frozen River

The river that runs through Wichita is frozen over in some places, including the area right near our place. I was out this Saturday morning exploring and took a few pictures from the adventure. The ice seemed quite thick in some places (maybe as much as two inches) but it was obvious that there were other spots were it was considerably thinner. I was tempted to try to crawl across the river but, given the fact that my intended route took me close to areas where liquid water still existed, I decided against it. The neatest thing I saw, by far, was a school of small fish swimming under the ice. Sadly, none of the pictures I took capture how cool this looked so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures.

To the Parents of Hardy Child

This afternoon our non-existant child received a box of eight books from Scholastic. We have no idea how or why we were blessed with this delivery and haven't quite figured out what to do with it, yet. (My guess is that a certain brother and sister-in-law of mine signed us up but I have not proof of this.)

We carefully read through the invoice and it was very clear that we owe money for this unrequested "introductory package" and had obligations for future book purchases. We haven't opened the package just yet and are trying to decide what do from here. Some of the options:

Do nothing. We haven't ordered anything and to the best of our knowledge they don't have our credit card information (though this may or may not actually be the case). Despite what they would like us to believe, we have not obligated ourselves in any way. Though I feel very confident that we are legally on safe ground that doesn't mean our lives can't be made unpleasant by people trying to extract money from us.

Return the books. Our little invoice lets us know that if we don't want to be members of this club we can simply return the books (they pay for shipping). This would be the polite thing to do and cause the least amount of hassle. For them, at least.

Call Scholastic and pretend to be offended at the implication that we have a child. I could pretend to be frustrated not-yet father who really desires to have a child but haven't been blessed in this way. I could pretend to be gay and make a big deal about how Kansas won't allow for the adoption of children by homosexual couples. I could pretend to be single (this despite what their database probably already knows.) We could pretend to be elderly and only have grown kids. There are all kinds of fun things you could do with this.

At this point, we're probably going to do nothing and just see what happens.

Sticking It To The Man

This past month, much to my surprise, the Wichita city council ruled against a re-zoning request that would have allowed Wal-Mart to build a third store here in town. Wal-Mart already has numerous Supercenters here in Wichita but most are on the edge of town; this was a more central location. I found out about it a few days before the vote and wrote to the council members to let them know that I didn't think Wal-Mart ran the kind of business that had the interests of Wichita in mind. I would not consider myself a wholly anti-Wal-Mart citizen (here are some that are) but definitely lean more that direction.

I wish I could say that our city council sided with the grass-roots efforts to keep Wal-Mart at bay but my reading of the minutes from that meeting (starting on page 98) lead me to believe that the council was more interested in getting the issue settled rather than give Wal-Mart time to work its PR machine to change the mind of the public. Regardless, the re-zoning request was turned down 5-0 and Wal-Mart was kept out of that particular location.

All that leaves is the rest of the city to defend.