My Favorite Sick Puppies Song

Drumming with a Smile

Lars Ulrich always looks like he has to go to the bathroom when he plays drums. He grimaces and looks like he is really mad. It brings an intensity, I think, to his playing. As the 'anti-Lars' I offer this video by Meytal Cohen. She smiles. I like it. When I play drums @ 5:15 Mass tonight and 11 Mass tomorrow, I fully intend to smile.

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Holy .... Nah, not really

Some call XERATH "Experimental Progressive Metallers" but I prefer to think of them as interesting. The vocals could do without the cookie monster style. I like the drumming and the guitar riff settles into a good groove fairly early in the song. While I don't know if I will ever really truly get over the way the vocalists in this type of band, but the drums and guitars (and bass) overpower it.

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Acoustic Metallica, Sextone, and Death Cab for Cutie

A few bands have been on my mind. First, Metallica.

In a conversation through e-mail with my brother, I mentioned that the band he was going to see reminded me of Sexstone.

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Was just reminded of how much I like this song too...

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I am not all about heavy metal. I have diverse tastes in music.

Fast Drums

1. Can you move along any faster?
   
   
   
   

I remember this as it happened...

Why?

Why is it that kids don't stay in their bed when they can't sleep? I mean, really? If I can't sleep, I roll over and relax. I don't go wake someone up.

And by the way, no, I am not going to go to San Francisco, CA, to see Metallica in December. It's not going to work out. I can still go to livemetallica.com and purchase the shows and it will be okay with me. Plus, I imagine, there will be online videos of these shows online on youtube.

Back to work tomorrow. I can't wait. I kind of took a mental break from work and that makes me feel refreshed.

Finally, Kevin Nash returned at Summerslam and kicked CM Punk, which allowed Alberto del Rio to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase and beat CM Punk to be the new WWE champion. Raw tomorrow night will be interesting.

The other interesting thing about tomorrow night is that I will wait a 1/2 hour for Alex's drum lesson to be over and while I wait, I put on headphones and play a Pearl electronic set. Last week, I put my MP3 player on and drummed along to Metallica's "Death Magnetic." Some of the songs I thought would be simple proved to not be as simple as I thought when I was actually trying to play. It was still fun. I continue to think of Mondays as a highlight to my week.

Kindles

Today was an exciting day. My father, my son, my daughter, and I trekked to Best Buy by the Coral Ridge Mall. My father bought my daughter a Kindle. Now, as I'm staring at the Kindle, my daughter has forgotten her password. Already.

Think about it...

You work for a software development company.

A user is using your software. The user selects a row in a grid and click a button called "View Details". On the View Details window, there is another grid that displays information relevant to the row that was selected on the first window. The user clicks Close to return to the previous window. An error message appears. The error message is related to a coding issue and not related in any way to the data the user viewed or anything like that. It is a pure programming issue.

The client calls Customer Support. The client is not upset but rather curious if anyone else has reported the issue. No, CS tells the client, no one has. The client notes that when he clicked the X in the upper right corner, after restarting the program and returning to the View Details window, the program doesn't bomb. The CS rep, with the client on the phone, navigates to the same window and when he clicks Close, the program does bomb. CS verifies they are using the same version of the software.

CS enters a bug into the bug tracking system. The description is "When the user clicks the Close button on the View Details window, the program bombs."

The bug is then routed to development. The development team enters this comment in the bug tracking software: "Removed Close button. Click the X to close the window."

It goes to the software tester. Software tester accepts this resolution and enters the following in the release notes for the release this resolution is included in: "When the user clicked the Close button, the program would abort. Changed the program to remove the Close button."

1) Is the developer's resolution of this bug satisfactory to you? [I say no, it is not. The developer should have fixed the code behind the Close button to close the window correctly.]
2) Should the developer's resolution have been rejected by software testing? [I say yes.]
3) Should the CS rep have asked the user what they expected as a resolution to the issue? [I say yes. The user wanted the Close button to work.]

I thought about this situation when reading a thread about software testing.

Manic Depression / Lowlife

Sometimes my musical tastes just scatter all over the worlds of music. This AM, without meaning to, I started thinking about Hendrix's Manic Depression and came upon this:

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Then I thought about the opposite of Hendrix: the band called Theory of a Deadman:

Thoughts about Marriage from Jim

Sometimes, unintentionally, you come across prose that swells your heart and soon you feel like the author was sitting next to you. This is from Jim Barrow, a member of a Tech Writer's chat list I subscribe to.

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You shouldn't compromise your beliefs because someone implies that you're flawed if you believe the things that you do. Stand up for what you believe in - don't let anyone bully you because of how you feel.

the world is moving further away from moral purity and more towards doing what is right in its own eyes. One of the symptoms of this moral decay is the increase in denial of the necessity of marriage, or that a priest is not necessary and marriage doesn't favor women's rights.

If you believe in God, then you know that we need marriage because God says we should be married. Marriage is not only for the benefit of the couple, but it is also for the children. When a husband and wife are bound by a public promise to stay faithful to each other, to remain dedicated to one another even through sickness and poverty, the marriage bond is a much stronger one, and this is critically important because marriage is the foundation of society. It is the bedrock of moral development of children and the place where faithfulness and integrity are lived out in the lives of its participants.

If a man and woman live together without the benefit of marriage, they are saying that God is not correct and that marriage is not necessary. If they have children out of wedlock they are risking the children's moral and emotional health since the children will learn that convenience and self-serving ideals are more important than integrity. They will learn that personal preference is more valuable than the welfare of another. They will learn that selfishness is the model by which to live since the sacrifice of commitment to one person has not been made.

Marriage helps to secure the family bond thereby providing a more secure environment in which the children may grow so that they might properly learn morality and integrity as they enter into society as adults. After all, those parents who do not value marriage tend not to value commitment and children should not be raised where the parents are not committed to each other.

Marriage helps to ensure the very sanctity of the spouse-to-spouse relationship since marriage is a public statement of exclusive dedication. This helps to establish a foundation in the relationship where a marriageless, living-together relationship can have no true trust since people are together out of convenience. If it becomes inconvenient, then they can easily break up - children or no children.

Marriage is not just a piece of paper. It is a promise to live together faithfully, till death, through thick and thin, sickness and health and it is a benefit to the children who are raised in it. Marriage is a blessing from God.

That's my belief, anyway.

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I was speechless after I read that the first time...

Status

What you're not seeing on this blog is my complete and total happiness. First of all, I have made a personal decision to not do something that I have done for the last 23 years. I gave it up just prior to the 2011 year starting and have been avoiding the vice. Anyone that knows me has seen me do this vice with them so yes, it's true, I gave up telling awful jokes. Except blonde ones to Susie. Not really but there may be a clue in the liquid if you look closely enough.
In other areas of my life, work is fantastically busy and rewarding. Every day this week, except yesterday, I have been in @ 6 AM. Now that means I get up at 5 AM. I write this not for pity or anything. I went through 6 months where I did not want to get up at 6 AM or ever when I knew where I was going and what I was going to do. My new job (the one I started 5/31) has been a blessing in my life. I am energized by the work I do. I sit by very nice people. I have a very supportive manager who listens to what is said. Today we were talking about the work we (the three of us) need to get done. "I keep hearing you have 'a lot' of work to do, but I can't quantify that. I can't say [to someone else] that there is 'a lot' of work to do because everyone's idea of what 'a lot' is is different." I counted the number of things we have to review. There is a lot - 89. Probably, in all, there are 100 things that must be done because some additional tasks have been identified. All of this was to be done by 8/5 (tomorrow) but despite putting in very long hours (I worked 6-530 today), we have not completed what we set out to complete. Here's the kicker. Instead of being furious with us for not having met a date, our manager is willing to enter negotiations on our behalf and to explain where we are; not with fingerpointing. It's really awesome. On top of that, when it was mentioned that neither I nor one of my co-workers could work a lot this weekend, our manager said, "I know you have been putting in crazy hours and I'm not asking for the weekend." How generous that attitude feels! I was very happy to hear that. And yes, I have been kicking as much a$$ as I can. It feels tremendous to be at work and not just because I'm not an employee of a former employer. It feel tremendous to have my life goals aligning, to have a better financial future, to have all the things that I have always wanted, coming together.
Watched the "The Naked Truth" episode with Megan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_vCu7qkuIo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0yDEUINng&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwvXTwyHC-A&NR=1

Moving Forward

Camping season 2011 is complete! We tore down from our month in Elkader, cleaned the camper out, negotiated through the construction around Ketelsen's RV, and ended up home around 6. We ordered pizza. While Alex and I watched "I am Number Four" downstairs, Karen and Megan watched "The Bachelor" upstairs.

Looking ahead, there is no signs of things slowing down anytime soon. We have something going pretty much every night and every weekend. I am actually looking forward to the next 5 weekends - I think I will sleep in my own bed (v. the camper).

I also am trying to kickstart my review writing. I (easily) have 31 CDs/DVDs to review and my ambitious goal is to write one a day. That's 500 words. For me, who proclaims I am a writer, 500 words a day should not be difficult. It's an hour away from the TV.

I am also ecstatic about work. One of the reasons I haven't written lately is I have been going into work @ 6 AM (getting up at 5) and that has caused me to go to sleep as close to 10 PM as possible. There are some big deadlines upcoming and I am doing everything in my power to meet them. Our department was cut by 1 (to 3) due to Lisa going to a different department. It has been a challenge. There are essentially 3 huge deadlines and I am doing every thing I can (like putting in extra hours) to meet them.

In *other* news, I could *possibly* be going to WinWriters in Memphis, TN, in March 2012. In *other* news, I could *possibly* be going to see Metallica, in San Francisco, CA, in December 2011. Both of those trips are too early in the planning process to go into a lot of detail. Not holding my breath on either - they may never happen.

So looking forward, there are a lot of things on my docket (I've never written that word before) in the next few months. There are going to be a lot upcoming things in my life and I cannot wait to experience them.

One final thought about the world. I am still finding out about the so-called "budget deal." I read on MSNBC that the Republicans won so I guess I should be happy? I also read that some members of the Tea Party wing are not happy. Mitt Romney, running for president, took the opportunity to speak about the president's lack of leadership (big surprise there!) and make a campaign speech in the process of a) condemning the current plan but b) failing to offer his own plan.

I'll take a minute to write about that. It makes me furious - and I don't care if you are a donkey or an elephant - when all the elected official can do is complain about the other plans that are presented. Where is *your* plan? If you know enough to say that the other plan is not going to work, is going to mean the loss of jobs, is going to mean that we are never going to get out of debt, then you surely know enough to offer a solution. Right? RIGHT??? Seriously. I don't get it. For example, if I tell you that a plan to only cut spending is going to make things worse, a fair response to that is, "Would you want your taxes to go up?" It's fair. Really, it is. It's okay to disagree. Personally, I think if you look deep enough and hard enough and long enough at where the federal government spends, surely, *surely* there is something that can reduce spending. And I've heard arguments that said, "If you cut XYZ program, it only reduces spending by 1 billion, but we have trillions we have to cut." Fine. How many billions have to be added up to equal 'trillions'? Figure it out and cut those programs.

That aside, I hope that the budget deal makes it somewhat easier for my kids to survive when I no longer walk the earth.