Hell Week

A couple days ago, I showed some daytime pictures of the chaos behind my house (scroll down a bit). It's saturday night. Here's what it looks like just a few minutes ago. It's a little blurry because the camera was on automatic settings and it knew that it's dark outside and tried to compensate.



And here is a 10-second clip of what it sounds like on my back porch. Dunno who that band is, but I can certainly hear them. It's louder toward the end of the clip. that's what I have to live with all week. Last year, the event drew 538,000 people over the course of the week. That averages out to almost 77,000 people per day, but the attendance is heaviest on friday, saturday, and sunday. In 2006, they set the PGA single day attendance record with over 168,000 people. This is all in my back yard and they follow it up with live bands until 1:00am in a tent that's maybe 2000 yards from the house.




After tomorrow, it's over for another year.

North Korea Claims the Moon, Will Remove American Flag

This is precious.


Kim Jong Il Announces Plan To Bring Moon To North Korea

Getting out

Here's a short video I shot driving out of the neighborhood early this afternoon. It's still tuesday so the traffic is not bad yet, and the waiting is minimal. I'll try to do the same thing later in the week when it's really bad.

Living Near a Major Sporting Event

I live in the middle of the traffic mess for the FBR Open (aka the Phoenix Open). Half a million people over the course of a week. Following this link will take you to a parking map. I live in the white area where it says "PASSES 3-7."

Here are two pictures I took a few minutes ago off my back balcony. The first one is looking in the SSE direction toward the parking. Not too full today as it's only tuesday and the real action doesn't start until thursday. Just out of shot to the left is a huge white tent called the Bird's Nest. (It's hidden by a tree from my balcony, but it's marked in black on the map linked above.) Yes, not only do we get Superbowl traffic for a week, we also get loud rock and roll concerts for free until 1:00am all week. I live far enough away that I just get bass and then rowdy drunk people in my neighborhood.


This picture is looking due south down the jogging path in the park. This is maximum zoom looking at one of the traffic guys. The tent near the top of the picture to the left is part of the tournament entrance where all the vendors sit and hand out free goodies. You are forced to walk through the tent to get to the golf course.



It's only tuesday. It gets worse as the week goes on.

Being a Parent

Back in September, author John Scalzi posted a wonderful essay on being poor. For better or for worse, thoughts on being a parent started appear in my head today in the same format. So, since I know he is also a parent, I dedicate this blog entry to John Scalzi. John's essay makes you stop an think about how we treat those less fortunate than ourselves. I hope mine will make you appreciate what you have. If you enjoy it, feel free to add your own lines in the comments.

Being a parent means waking up several times a night to feed the baby.

Being a parent means not telling him that when you did it, you got away with far more.

Being a parent means you get only one ice cream bar from a box of twenty.

Being a parent means things that worked perfectly for fifteen years are suddenly broken.

Being a parent means the person causing all the mischief is named "Not Me."

Being a parent means spending your evening studying subjects you thought were gone from your life forever.

Being a parent means eating sugar-coated cereal again.

Being a parent means playing with toys without people thinking you are weird.

Being a parent means singing silly songs.

Being a parent means feeling the loss of the tragedies you see on the news.

Being a parent means you no longer have a life.

Being a parent means tremendous worry when a normally noisy child is quiet with fever.

Being a parent means hearing gems from the mouths of babes.

Being a parent means having a different favorite every day.

Being a parent means having no favorites.

Being a parent means discovering what your parents meant when they told you they don't love you any less than your sibling, only different.

Being a parent means always thinking of them as your baby.

Being a parent means surprise notes and calls from the school telling you that your little angel isn't.

Being a parent means great frustration.

Being a parent means catching yourself saying the same things your parents said, you know, the things you swore you'd never say.

Being a parent means hearing them laugh at the clothes you wore as a teenager.

Being a parent means being strong when she says "I hate you."

Being a parent means letting them grow up.

Being a parent means going out to dinner at Chuck E. Cheese knowing you'll eat when you get home.

Being a parent means washing clothes that you know were only worn for ten minutes.

Being a parent means discovering that between your arms is a safe haven.

Being a parent means losing your temper.

Being a parent means sacrifice.

Being a parent means you get to watch cartoons again.

Being a parent means watching Hannah Montana yet again.

Being a parent means sending kids to bed on New Years Eve at 9:00PM because you live on the west coast and that's when the ball drops.

Being a parent means celebrating with sparkling apple juice.

Being a parent means cleaning up after the kid's dog.

Being a parent means going on field trips to places you would never have thought about visiting.

Being a parent means wondering why it went in as you pull the rock out of her nose with a pair of tweezers.

Being a parent means saying 'no' when you want to say 'yes.'

Being a parent means saying 'yes' when you want to say 'no.'

Being a parent means smiling at the cloud-9 on a new parent's face because you know that ain't gonna last.

Being a parent means waking up one day to discover he is taller than you, and wondering how he can still have the same baby face.

Being a parent means a warm feeling when she wins.

Being a parent means hiding the disappointment when he loses because he needs you to tell him it's okay.

Being a parent means saying "No, we aren't there yet."

Being a parent means watching them sleep, even when they're big.

Being a parent means tough love.

Being a parent means spending time together.

Being a parent means understanding that Harry Chapin song.

Being a parent means wishing the house were quiet, then missing the noise when it is.

Being a parent means fixing the lawn mower together.

Being a parent means you have the best date for the father-daughter dance.

Being a parent means no boy is good enough.

Being a parent means accepting their life decisions, even if you disagree.

Being a parent means letting them learn from their own mistakes.

Being a parent means being an important part of a family.

Beard Revisited

By the way, the beard is now gone.

Managing the Undiscovered Career

The company who recently released me from service was kind enough to hire a career transition company called DBM. It is the first time I have ever tried using that kind of company. Sure, I've used headhunters before, and may again. This is different. They are a resource to teach you effective ways of job hunting.

I've always kept a live resume, updating and modifying it from time to time. It was effective enough for me, especially when I wanted to stay within the industry. When it comes down to it, a resume is effective if it gets you the interview. After that it's up to you.

I say was effective because we live in unusual times. In today's economy, with so many jobs being eliminated, it's hard to stand out. I'm learning that there are better ways to present yourself on paper. There are ways to change industries.

Part of the problem most people have is boiling work experience down to accomplishments. Even in jobs I despised and spent the whole day wishing I were on my way home, I accomplished something of note. (In this case, I'm not thinking of any recent jobs. I'm thinking of that place I worked before my oldest kid was born, the place with bags of iron oxide everywhere.)

The problem is how to translate that into something that makes you look like a person who can accomplish things. That's where I'm finding this place helpful. It's one thing to say that you wrote awk/sed scripts in UNIX. It's something entirely different to say that you wrote awk/sed scripts to retrieve often-needed line-items of data that takes 3 seconds, when it took 5 minutes to do it manually. Boom. You demonstrate a skill and an impact.

I'm still constructing my technical version, but I already have a freelance writing version that I have already used. Time will tell if it is effective.

Beard

Nobody outside my immediate family and the people I've come into contact with over the past 6 weeks know that I have been growing a beard. Now that the layoff is a 3-day-weekend removed, it's time to get serious about the job hunt. That means, the beard has to go. But, since most people haven't seen me with a beard, here are some pictures.

I was rehearsing the melody to the piece I'm getting ready to record and was actually playing when my daughter Audrey snapped the pictures. I'm not smiling mainly because I'm concentrating on where to put my fingers. I have a capo on the 10th fret for two reasons. First, I want to use the low strings for the melody to capture a fatter sound. Second, most of my sheet music, and especially my fake books, are written for Bb instruments. I'm making the guitar into a Bb instrument with the capo two half-steps below the octave.



From another angle. For those interested, not only do I transpose the instrument via capo, I also have the low E string drop D.



Here, I'm rehearsing the bass part of the song, which I'm going to do on keyboard with a somewhat techno but more Vangelis-inspired riff. That's why I'm standing down by the left end of the keyboard. The highest note I'm using is below middle C.



The keyboard is set to tone 308, which is "slow saw lead," and transposed down two half-steps to convert the keyboard to a Bb instrument, as well. I'm only about half done with the keyboard arrangement, but it's tricky because it's all staccato eight notes at quarter = 144, combined with a low F# (concert E) drone. It should help get the "cosmic" sound I'm looking for.

Anyway, after 6 weeks the beard still looks scraggly and I probably would need another 6 weeks for it to fill in completely. So, goodbye beard.

Star Wars Retold by Someone Who Hasnt't Seen it.

Funny clip of Star Wars retold by someone who has not seen the movies.


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Day 2

My first full day of free-agency in 14 years started with the same alarm clock time and the same morning routine. Gotta get the wife out the door to work and the kids out the door in time for the school bus. At the same time, it felt like I was getting ready to go, too. Except no lunch to pack.

Spent the first hour or so reviewing the requirements for the scout troop camp out for February, then poked around on a few local company web sites. I'm still recovering from the shell-shock, but there have been a lot of warm emails from well-wishers, and I appreciate that. Thanks.

This afternoon, I need to get started with the career transition firm that I get to use. I'm not going to post a daily play-by-play of this period of change. It just isn't good form and probably it would be a jinx anyway.