vanderwal.net

Missing the Bay Area

It is a sad state of affairs these days. They say, "home is where the heart is". Well I have a few homes. One home is San Francisco and The Bay Area. I have not been to the Bay Area since September 2001, when I was granted a slightly longer stay than I had originally planned.

I will be back later this month to refresh my feelings for my old home and the area where I was born. I have still spent more of my life in Northern California than any other area, but my roots are growing weak and that bothers me.

Today I came across San Francisco magazine on the bookstore shelf. I thumbed through it and recognized very little. This is the first time I have had this feeling. I do not get this feeling with New York, as New York is ever fresh in my mind. I really want to get my familiarity back with my beloved Bay Area. Currently I fear I will feign recognition, like a childhood friend you meet at an airport and have to quizzically ask if it really them.

I have a lot of catching up to do with the Bay Area. I want the soil under my nails, foggy breeze in my hair, soft bright light in my eyes, and cacophony of creative sounds in my ears. I miss the drives from San Francisco to Moraga or Palo Alto in the summertime to get warm sunshine on my face to break the foggy evenings. I miss the wondrous food at every turn. I miss the creative can do spirt with just enough irreverence to pulse the blood as if everything were a new experience. I miss the sharing of passion of life and work among friends and acquaintances. I desire to travel the shelves of Green Apple Books, breakfast at the Pork Store in the Haight (and peer out their bathroom window into my old backyard), grab a deep dish pizza from Zachary's in Berkeley, and see great friends.

Pardon the pauses

Yes, things have been slow in the main content section of Off the Top, as time has been usurped by a (now) six month old. By the time we get Will to bed and I get dinner cooked and cleaned up it is 8:30 and I am just sitting down to get to e-mail, then 145 (or so) RSS feeds, and finally crafting a note for OtT. I have been finding the Quick Links to be easier for me to dump items in for me to come back to later. I have also received thanks for the Quick Links RSS feed, as others can also get easier access to the links. My plan has been to flesh out comments for the Quick Links at later dates, but that time has not been made available.

Time will be a little shorter this month as I am trying to knock out some longer writing pieces and prepare for a speaking gig on accessibility.

I used to watch time fly by in minute and hour increments, now it flies by in days and weeks.

iPod still missing music

I have been loving my iPod for some months now. But, I am continually amazed that in the 4,000 songs I currently have stored I don't always have what I want to hear. Not only do I not have the one or two songs, but I do not have anything by that artist or composer and I own four or five CDs by that person. I just realized that I did not have any Eric Clapton, but that was only when I was grabbing the Holy Cole Trio to rip. Eric Clapton August lived in my Walkman for years at the end of the 80s. It was part of what framed living in Oxford and traveling into London on Thursdays or Fridays.

I had been thinking that the iPod would be much like having a Walkman again, but it is much more than that. A Walkman took pre-cognitive measures before heading out to ensure that the music you wanted was loaded or in another pocket. I always traveled with three or four tapes, usually mix tapes to get my space worth. Now I always have something I am not tired of or would like to hear (albeit not always exactly what I wanted, yet).

I am really enjoying the iPod on the train rides as it blocks out the chatter of non-regular riders who know the rules of the Metro are not to talk, but if necessary to have a conversation quietly. I really enjoy the music while waiting on the platform watching others. One night a man stepped to the edge of the platform and was practicing ballet positions in street shoes and slacks. His tapping, pointing, and placing the his feet was in perfect time to what I was listening to, which I believe was Lamb.

I do not wear the telltale white headphones as I am not a fan of the look, but also greatly prefer the sounds produced by my Sony Fontopia, which tend to block a lot of external noise.

The biggest downside of this arrangement is missing out on the sounds around me. I also am not finding the concentration reading or when knocking out ideas on my graphpad. These are things I did not notice when I was younger and had my Walkman, but I may not have felt free time so rare.

Old phone number

This Cris Rock's cell phone bit really helped boost my spirits on an unhealthy week in our house.

On this end we had Joy in the hospital, Will projectile vomiting (like a fire hydrant), and me getting a light version of the virus that put Joy in the hospital. We are all getting better, but still need some rest.

Life Lesson

It has been a rough couple of days. I was finishing an e-mail to the other side of the globe and on a voice chat, when I had to say "got to go bye". I had been feeling the gurgling for an hour or so and knew what was coming, but little did I know. Yes, food poisoning (hint, don't rewarm then refrigerate and then rewarm creamed spinach).

At 2am on Tuesday morning my I, my body, and Joy had had enough and it was off to the emergency room. It seems to have been a good choice as I had lost a sever amount of fluids and needed to take two full bags of IV and could have used a third. This was my first trip to the ER since in the past 10 years or longer, well for myself that is. It was the first IV I have had since I was very little.

Yesterday I went through insane headaches from dehydration and slept much of the day. I was also not allowed to touch Will, which was very tough. I did manage to get a gallon of Gatorade down and keep it down, which was a good accomplishment. I thought work would have been in the plans of today, but my body was not up to that game. I was back to eating food this afternoon and should be back to normal tomorrow. I am wading through a flood of e-mails here at home and know I will have even more at work tomorrow.

The whole thing had the balance of life eerily brought before me. One of the medicines that I was given made me insanely thirsty, but I was not aloud to drink and had me feeling like I was in a Paul Bowles story. When I got home I was so sore and weak I felt like a bag of bones and organs wrapped in skin, with little more to me. I did not like this glimpse at mortality, particularly not while looking in on my son.

Now the trick is finding a doctor that will give me a follow-up visit. I have had two doctors leave town in the past couple years and one stopped doing outpatient call (only will see patients in the hospital). This also knocked out any hope at going to SXSW as I work for a company that lumps sick-leave and vacation (nobody want to be out sick so people often come to work sick) so my vacation days are gone for that valuable experience.

Chomper

Will's has his first tooth peek through this morning. He has been teething for about three or four weeks. Last night he was a very fussy sleeper and this morning we know the reason, well I found our as he chomped down on my finger and I got more than gummy resistance. Big day for the the guy.

Birthday Celebration

Today is an icy birthday day here. Just another reason to celebrate.

Will Update

Will had another doctor visit (for his four months) and he was suggested to have 4 Tablespoons of rice cereal two times a day (he has been eating one Tablespoon a day for a little over a week). In two weeks he can start eating 2 Tablespoons of oatmeal. Two weeks after that he can start eating vegetables. Two more weeks and he will start high school, okay, maybe not this last item. Dang it if he is not growing up quickly. He has been teething for a couple weeks and it should be any day or week now that the bottom two teeth pop in.

Tonight I was finally home from work while Will was still up. This is always a great treat for me. He has just a few minutes of being really cranky right before falling a sleep, but it is still wonderful to have that time with him.

What February Means

February 1st means my birthday is only days away (this Friday actually). I have had such luck with the Atkins body hack (down 35 pounds or so) I am proposing to have an Atkins Birthday, that is right I will be one year younger on the 6th.

I have had it with getting older. I just want to spend more time with Will.

Doing this how long

I realized today that I have been marking-up and posting to my own personal Web pages since November 1995. I have been trying to figure out when all this started. The pages started as "The Growing Place", which included the links page along with a handful of other pages on CompuServe's initial hosting of personal pages. I moved from there to Clark Net in late 1996 so I could get CGI access and have my own e-mail (well not really my own). In late 1997 I bought vanderwal.net and finally moved it to a couple hosting homes in 1998 and 1999. Then has been with its current host since 2000, which has provided great service and resources since then (I actually had an other personal site with this host much earlier and ran not so personal site the host for a short while.

Why all of this today? Don't know. It could be that I finally found when Compuserve started hosting member's pages. It does not seem like that long ago until I think that I have been building a presence on the Web for coming on nine years. I have been doing this professionally since 1996. I have been working professionally as a geek since 1988, either as my full-time role or just one of the hats I wore. I have learned a lot about application development and Web development in all these years. It is still about getting the information into the hands of people that are looking for it when they need it.

Hearts and Cheese Cubes

There are two things I have been enjoying putting in salads of late, Parano cheese (a Dutch cheese with a parmesan taste, but a dense smooth gouda texture) and artichoke bottoms. The artichoke bottoms, a.k.a. hearts, are hard to find as they have no leaves. I have found I really prefer the ones from Trader Joe's in a jar to others, which come in a can. If the canned variety is all that is available, try to find them at Whole Foods. I am sorry, but I do not have the brands imprinted in my mind.

Just thought to share, you may go read something else now.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!!

Holiday adventures

These past few days were very good and trying. On the good front, it was a family holiday spent with family and friends. It was also a foodfest. Tuesday was pork chops with sweet onion, apples, and cumin with a side of cauliflower au gratin; Wednesday was crab quiche and linguini in a herb garlic clam sauce; Christmas was rack of herb rack of lamb (from Trader Joes), popovers, garlic mashed potatoes, haricot vert, asparagus with toasted sesame seeds, salad with Parano cheese, tomato, and artichoke hearts, with dark chocolate truffles for desert.

The foodfest more or less ended there as I was weary of cooking (a first for me) and coming down with a cold. My mom, however needed more attention as some ailment caught her and gave her 36 hours in the hospital. She was released this morning and is doing much better now that her fluids and minerals and salts are largely back to normal, thankfully.

The gift giving went well all around I believe. It was good to have my parents here for Will's first Christmas. Right now I really need a rest.

Merry Christmas - vanderwal.net

Merry Christmas!!! We feel very lucky as we got the greatest present three months ago. Will has been the best present we could have ever dreamed up.

Have a great holiday with you and yours and share in the warmth of friends and family.

First snow

We got our first snow of the season last night and it was Will's first snow.