I've made three trips from Portland, Oregon (where I live) to Washington DC in the past month. I love DC, but that's enough for me for now. Especially when you add in all the other trips I've made in-between. Try expecting to fly from DC to Omaha, but getting to Chicago and finding out your flight to Omaha was cancelled, so you decide to fly to Kansas City and drive to Omaha. at 1 a.m., then five hours later you get back on a plane to fly to your next stop

Crazy. I have spent most of the past couple months on the road. Or in the air, as the case may be.

Anyhow, time for a couple days off, no matter how much I may be needed elsewhere, so I am heading up to Scranton, PA to catch back up with my friend, Mary Beth. Her brother's getting married at West Point this weekend so we'll be up that way for a couple of days. What a cool place to get married. He graduated there last year and is an officer in the U.S. Army in Arizona. It will be a fun weekend.

Then it's back home so my dogs and cat can stare at me in disdain again for a day or two. Heh.

I was in Washington DC today (in fact I still am - our flight through Chicago is delayed by a few hours) for a business meeting at the OCC. After the meeting ended we had some time to spare , so my coworker Milind and I spent an hour or so checking out a few spots around the city.

Our last stop before heading for the airport was Arlington National Cemetery. Milind had not been there before, and it had been more than a year for me. The last time I went, they were just closing for the evening, and also at the time I did not get a chance on that trip to find out where my grandpop and grandmom are buried.

But today we had plenty of time, so I went to the location office and the nice people there pulled out the old rolls of microfilm (seriously - someone should digitize all that for the cemetery, for free, as a donation. It's sad that they have to use Microfilm for anything before 1999) and found my grandpop's burial location.

I'd hoped our flight in on Monday would arrive in time to let me go there on Memorial Day, but no such luck, so today - Memorial Day +1, so to speak - was a good day to go.

He served in the U.S. Army - including service during World War Two and Korea. My grandmom and their three kids - my mom and her two younger sisters - traveled to Germany when he was stationed there. I'm told they moved around a lot. Probably typical army family style.

At any rate, what I remember of Grandpop was bouncing on his knee when I was very small. That and him singing "Little David Play on your Harp" to my little brother (David, of course). Of my Grandmom I remember much more. She was a very nice lady and a good person.

Anyhow, it was good to go there and spend a few minutes. Their marker (it's a shared one, because they intern couples together at Arlington) is under a big tree, and it's just a beautiful place. I snapped a few pictures before I left. I'm sure I will go back again, hopefully soon.

Arlington National Cemetery is simply an amazing, thought provoking, emotional place.

Milind and I went to the U.S. Capital building earlier in our trek, and walked in the east-coast summer heat for a while and took some pictures. The capital city has moved into that hot and muggy phase of the early summer, and today was a perfect example. We just don't get that kind of humidity in Oregon. Thank goodness.

   The Capital Building

   Milind's presentation style pose

Take the time this Memorial Day to remember. Put the memories of those who have sacrificed or gone before you at the front of your thoughts, and their families and friends in your prayers.

This day I remember many who have gone before me: My grandfather, who served in two wars and rests in Arlington National Cemetery and whose grave I hope to visit in the next couple weeks when I am there. My son. Family. Friends. And many people I never knew, who made a decision to sacrifice their lives to make ours better and - in their own very individual ways - to do the right thing.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General from Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864

Do not stand by my grave and weep ... I am not there;
I do not sleep.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds
circling in flight.
Do not stand by my grave and cry ...
I am not there. I did not die.

-- Royster

If you're not into x-rays or thinking about surgery and stuff like that, you can just skip this one. Many people have had me promise to show them pictures of the artificial disc that was implanted in me three months ago once I got them, so - well - here you go. This is a pretty amazing and relatively new (in the USA anyhow) area of medicine.

The Kineflex artificial lumbar disc is a three-piece metal-on-metal mechanical replacement, which is used to treat chronic and severe lumbar pain due to degenerative disc disease. It's in FDA trials right now, which makes me a bit of a guinea pig. It's not the kind of surgery you decide to do without a lot of serious thought and only after trying every other option. It replaced my natural disc, and now my severe back and leg pain that I lived with 24 hours a day for years is practically gone - and as a bonus I am a little bit taller than I was before the surgery. As I've said here before, I have my life back thanks to the doctors and the people that built this little device.

How'd they get it in there? The made an 8-inch horizontal incision just below my belly button (yep, they approach the spine from the front), spread the bones apart, removed the disc that was damaged, and put this new one in place.

You can click each image to view them larger-sized. I've removed any sensitive personal information.

I had to go to the Seattle area for my three-month post-op followup with my surgeon today. My back is in great shape he says (more x-rays were made today that look pretty darned cool), and the doc thanked me for doing so well. Heheh... I think maybe he had a lot to do with that, though. So I thanked him, again, for helping me get my life back. I owe him a lot.

After my appointment with the doc, I drive the ten minutes from the hospital over to the Microsoft campus and met up face-to-face with my online acquaintance, Trevin Chow. He's on the Windows Live ID team there, and I've always though he was a good guy. Come to find out I was right - we had fun meting and discussing a variety of things. And Trevin, thanks for the coffee!

Shameless plug time: Go read Trevin's blog - it's well worth the read. And, of course, subscribe. Here, let me make it easy for you: Subscribe to Trevin's RSS feed.

It was especially fun because although we'd never met face-to-face, it was much like the natural continuation of a conversation. Trevin emailed me this afternoon in reply to my saying thanks and said, "Your personality oozes into your blog, so you weren't a surprise in any way :) " Well, I hope it's not an infection, or we're all doomed... Heh...

Seriously though - that's exactly the impression I got from him. Glad to have met ya, Trevin. And he'll laugh that I posted all this, heheh...

Random Side-bar: Trevin has his motorcycle endorsement, but he's smart enough (read: much smarter than I) not to buy one because a couple people he knows have been in bad motorcycle accidents recently. I worry about that, too. If you ever ride a motorcycle, you must pretend you're invisible on the road - others simply will not see you. And even then, there's no guarantees.

So... Who was the last person you met, whom you met first online, but eventually caught up with face to face? And, who is the one person you've met online, but not met face to face, whom you'd most like to meet in person?

My friend and coworker Alex and his brothers Robert and Ben are in Montana with family and most importantly their mom, who had a stroke last week and is not doing so well. It's a hard time, and I imagine it's both extra important and extra difficult today, since it's that one day a year we define as Mother's Day. Robert's been writing about some of the experience on his blog, and it's been a daily read for me. I don't know Robert as well as I know Alex, and I've never met Ben, but somehow it's good to know they're all together at an important time.

I talked to my mom today using the webcams I bought a few months back along with Live Messenger 8's video conferencing capabilities. She let me know yesterday she wanted to do the "video camera call thing" and I've been kind of bad lately about having my camera hooked up when she wants to do a call. She really likes being able to see the person on the other end. The things that many of us take for granted are really pretty special for others, you know?

We had a good conversation about it all today. Mom asked me why this video chat thing is free - almost like there must be something wrong with it if you don't pay for it. I explained it's not really free, there's advertisements and all. She said something like, "Ahhh" and then paused and got that thoughtful look on her face (which I could actually see, of course, since it's video chat heheh), and then she asked me the zillion-dollar question:

"Well if that's the case," she said, "why do people use telephones, then?"

Ah hah, she gets it! Heh... I explained the whole "telephone of the future thing" to her. She sees the light.

After talking throughout the day to people about moms, reading about moms, and of course sending my own mom some flowers and doing a live Internet video chat over the thousand-plus miles between us, I was left with one thought. Why do we relegate this celebration to one day a year? Moms truly deserve more than that.

I was thinking back about life recently. When I was a kid, my mom was a single parent faced with real challenges. I realized that it must have been a darn scary time for her, really. It took real courage and strength to handle a couple of growing boys like she did. She sometimes tells me she wishes it could have been better for me and my brother. For my part, though, I can't imagine having it any better than we did - with a mom who really and truly cares and who pushes on - even if it is scary, and hard, and tough.

Thanks mom. For everything. You're awesome. Truly.

I thought this was just about the coolest thing ever when I saw it a couple weeks ago in Florida.

Many people park their boats in the water at a marina. But at the place where my aunt and uncle keep theirs in Florida, the boats are all stacked in these huge racks in a warehouse and are moved around by great big fork-lifts. Want to take your boat out on the water? No problem, they'll get it for ya. They drop it right in the water alongside the dock and pick it up from the same place. High, dry, and presumably safer from storms than if it was stored outside in the water. Sure keeps the boats nice and clean and secure. Pretty cool.

A couple weeks ago I visited my aunt and uncle, Gail and Scott, in St. Pete while I was in Florida for a work conference. We went out on the boat and hung out for a while on the beach. It was a great weekend.

Scott pilots the boat:

... and cleans it afterward:

Me and my aunt Gail on the beach - you can tell I'm not from Florida eh? I didn't pack any shorts.

It's been seven weeks since I underwent surgery on my lower back up near Seattle, Washington. I was the recipient of a Kineflex lumbar artificial disc, a three-part, all-metal mechanical replacement for the torn, herniated and collapsed (degenerated) disc between my L5 and S1 vertebrae. That's the lowest one in your spine.

This surgery has truly given me my life back.

Before the procedure, I was always - and I quite literally mean always - in pain. Real pain, the kind that wears you down every minute of every day. The kind of chronic pain that people can't fully understand until they've lived with it themselves. It wears you down, chews you up, and eventually spits you out. "Normal" for me was a lot like the "normal" road noise is for someone who lives right next to a freeway: Spend your whole life around it and your brain tunes it out just to cope, but it's always there. Sure, louder noises still annoy you, but the mind has a way of coping with whatever you throw at it, at least as best it can. But that background pain still has an effect, progressively more so over time. When the sound is gone, it's almost deafening. And when the pain is gone, you finally realize just how bad it's been.

I feel ten times better than I've felt in more than ten years. Seriously.

Yeah, I am a guinea pig of sorts - the artificial disc I was fortunate enough to receive was provided to me as part of an FDA trial - not very many people have this hardware in their bodies. I did more than a year of careful and critical research on artificial disc surgery before I decided to take the leap. I considered bone fusion (which is the classic and most common treatment for my condition) and I tried every other treatment that was available to me - physical therapy, exercise, medicine, cortisone injections, minimally invasive procedures, you name it. When it came down to it, it was a choice between bone fusion or ADR (artificial disc replacement) procedure. the ADR device allows the joint to remain mobile instead of locking it up permanently, and I am only 38 years old (well for a few days anyhow), so staying mobile is  important to me. Because I had a 50/50 chance of receiving either a Charite or Kineflex artificial disc (they split the patients randomly, half and half), I also had to become confident in both technologies (the Charite is two metal plates with a plastic core, while the Kineflex is the same basic idea, but with a different design and a metal core). I can tell you that I was lucky and got the one I really wanted (the Kineflex), but either would have been okay with me.

Not everyone is the same, and surgery is rough stuff. The procedure is a serious one with potential side effects that one has to be ready to accept. Everyone's body is different and surgery is in large part an art, which means they all go slightly differently. Many people benefit from the new technology, while some are not so fortunate. That said, I am so grateful for my decision and to my doctors and the staff that have given me so much back. I did not fully realize how bad off I was until now, and still each day I keep feeling better. It will likely be many months before I can say I am healed and recovered, but I can see and believe that day's coming, which is something I had almost given up hope on before.

I write this from what used to be one of the most painful places in my life: An airliner seat at 37,000 feet. And guess what?

It doesn't hurt anymore.

Last week I was in Dallas, Texas for a conference. Typical of my way of doing things, I landed at the DFW airport and headed for the hotel and realized that somewhere in the back of my mind there was a lingering thought that was hinting that Dallas, Texas might have some importance, like maybe there was something (in addition to the conference) I needed to do since I was there. You know what I mean: One of those "seems to me there's something important I am supposed to do if I ever travel here, but I can't think of what it is..." kind of things.

Eventually it popped into my mind: My mom had told me that my Aunt Marsha and Uncle Mike had moved to Texas a couple years ago. Maybe it was Dallas? My memory was not helping me much. I called them up, and sure enough they're living in Richardson, which is northeast of the big city. So, I got to spend a couple fun evenings at their home catching up, eating dinner and meeting their dogs. It was a good time.

During one of my visits, my aunt brought out some old family photos and things that she thought I might be interested in seeing. It was fun and interesting to run through the old photos, but there was also one piece of paper in the stack of things that especially caught my eye. It looked to be a family tree reaching back many generations, showing a history of the family dating back several hundred years. Wow! I've always wondered if something like this existed, and have never really known where to look. Score!

What I found our really caught my interest - Thirteen generations back, on September 6, 1628, my ancestors arrived at "Naumking" on the Massachusetts Bay (which they would eventually rename to "Salem") with John Endicott, who would become the first governor of the Massachusetts colony. They were the first group of Puritan colonists in Salem, and had left from Weymouth, England June 20 of the same year.

Encouraged by one sheet of paper, a few names and some rough dates, I have once again personally discovered the truly awesome power of searching with Google.

My Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather was named Charles Gott. Charles and his first wife, Gift and their two young daughters sailed from Weymouth, England, on June 20, 1628, aboard the ship Abigail with Captain Endicott. They landed in Salem, Massachusetts, on September 6, 1628 and the sea voyage must have been harrowing ("the sea roared and the waves tossed us horridly ... it was fearful dark and the mariners made us afraid with their running here and there, and there was loud crying one to another to pull this or that rope."). The passengers of the Abigail were Salem's first settlers, and in 1635 Charles was made a deacon of the first Puritan church established in America. Gift apparently died in about 1636, and Charles then married Sarah Mansfield, with whom he had three children. One of those children was named Charles as well, and the line runs from there.

I've located on the web - again thanks to Google - several people who have traced the genealogy of their families back to the Gotts, and who's lines intersect mine. Distant relatives. I'll have to start sending some email to those people and say hi. I'll also have to finish this research and post it here so people can do the same with me.

On a loosely-related note (no pun intended), I read recently where Buzz Bruggeman sent a DNA sample off to Family Tree DNA, and the service found some relatives of his in their matching process. I ordered a kit and yesterday I completed my ritual cheek-scraping and will be sending the samples back to the DNA lab on Monday. The test focuses on the paternal side, so I wonder what I will find out about my dad's side of the family? My wild guess is Ireland, but hey who knows? I'm excited to possibly find out.

The other day one of my coworkers, Brent, asked me if I've given up blogging.

No, Mr. Sarcasm - I have not. But with the recent wholesale replacement of part of my spine, plus travel, work, a variety of stressors, the need to rest and a ton of other things, I have not been writing much here lately.

I have a lot to write about, though - eventually. I just need to get better caught up with life. Heck, we're losing an hour of sleep tonight. That doesn't help any!

So don't worry. I'm not dead yet.

Prior to my business meetings today, I was able to spend a short time with my friend Florian here in Germany. His parents hosted me at their home and shared a bit of real, small-town Germany with me, including some of the food and customs. Florian took me all over the countryside to a few places, including a few that most tourists never see - off the beaten path, as they say. It was a great weekend, one that I will remember for many, many years.

The Heidelberg Castle is a common tourist stop, but we went there anyhow, and I am glad we did. It was actually the second castle we visited (the first one, Hardenburg, I did not have a camera for). It's a pretty amazing place, and we first climbed the hill on the opposite side of the river from the castle (called the Philosopher's Walk), which has a great view of the old city and the castle. Then we crossed the old bridge and walked through the city, then up 315 steep steps to the castle. Given my recent condition, this was a healthy climb, to say the least. But I made it.

From the top one can walk through the castle and see all sorts of interesting things. There's a huge wine barrel in a lower level of the castle - like huge as in you have to see it to believe it. And of course the architecture is amazing.

Actually, the smaller castle we visited the day before, called Hardenburg (follow link for pics), while smaller and relatively hidden away at the far end of a valley in the town where we stayed (in an area called the Rhineland-Palatinate), was probably more fun to explore because it's not heavily visited and almost every nook and cranny is accessible, with the exception of part of the lower levels. It's interesting to learn about the history of the construction - and periodic destruction, typically by the French armies - of these castles. The Hardenburg Castle was built sometime shortly after 1200 A.D. That's some serious history.

Also in the same area is the Limburg Monastery, on top of another hill across from the Hardenburg Castle. It is a large and spectacular ruin, as well. It's been added on to recently, so some of the structure is a little too modern looking, but luckily you cannot see it while walking the grounds, at least once you leave the parking lot. This is a huge structure, and was built in the 9th century. It was first a castle of sorts and then was converted to a monastery for Benedictine monks. It's an interesting and rich history - the Hardenburg Castle was actually built illegally on Limburg land by the governors who were responsible for protecting it, but it seems that did not make the Limburg residents happy. Read more here. As is typical, the history is colorful and full of interesting stories over the years.

If you even get a chance to visit Germany, be sure to take some time to get off the common paths followed by tourists. While the Autobahn is fun (for us Americans with our annoying speed limits and all that), taking your time by taking the back roads through smaller German towns to get to your destination is worthwhile. It's there that you get to see Germany in it's full color, not on the superhighway.

We also visited a museum that has lots of aircraft (including an actual 747 you can walk though and a whole slew of military aircraft from around the world), a U-boat, and many fine cars on display. An amazing selection of very cool items.

Thanks to Florian and his parents for a terrific few days - I hope have the opportunity to visit again soon. Germany is a beautiful country.

I'll post a few more pictures and some details shortly from the other stops and things we did along the way.

I had the pleasure of visiting the School of Science and Technology here in Beaverton, Oregon on Friday for the junior class career day. Along with a whole slew of other talented and much-more-interesting-than-me adults, I was able to converse with a wide variety of students about what they're about to face in their lives: Financial aid forms, the Real World™ and not really knowing what life has in store (but wishing they did).

It was a great time, and it gave me a chance to reflect on where I've been and how I got to where I am today. there have been many highs and lows in life along the way. But (and this is probably one of life's most important lessons) regardless of what all happens in life and why, I'm a better person for having experienced all the things that have happened around me over the years.

So, for the couple of you students who manage to find your creative and inquisitive ways to this blog, thanks for the opportunity and don't forget the open-ended offer: Send me an email or call me (the number is over there on the right) if you have more questions or want to see what the crazy world of software, Internet security, catching online bad guys, and IT is all about.

For everyone else: When was the last time you spent half a day at a local school talking with the students and staff? Everyone should do something like that at least once a year - participate in some event and give back a little of what you've got - your experiences, good bad or otherwise. Share it with the upcoming generation of geeks, actors, cops, lawyers, engineers, recruiters, sales execs, dentists, marketers, accountants, entrepreneurs, nanotechnology physicists, and rocket scientists. Call a school, give half a day. All you have to do is ask, and you might be surprised what you learn.

Okay. I'm outa here. Pray for WiFi on the airplane. Deutschland hier komme ich!

Many of you who read this know that I had back surgery recently. The surgery was an Artificial Disc Replacement at the L5/S1 level, with a Kineflex artificial lumbar disc. It's been almost three weeks, and my current assignment from the doc is plenty of rest (and so I am at home almost all the time), combined with walking as much as I reasonably can, but without overdoing it. I'll soon be able to go into work part of the time for very light duty. Right now I am able to do some work from home, which is one of the things that helps to keep me sane day after day.

Progress milestones while healing - big and small - really stand out in a recovery like this. I was able today - for the first time - to walk the half mile trek to my mailbox and back. It's the longest single outdoor walk I have done so far. I live at the end of a long gravel driveway, up and down two steep hills. As I was climbing the first hill and neared the top, it dawned on me that I was not slowing any, and that it didn't hurt!! Wow! By the time I got back to the house, I was quite worn out (exhausted, really), but no worse for the wear physically. Progress! Not to mention it's a great psychological milestone. Before the surgery I would have been staggering, clumsy and in pain before I got a hundred yards into it. Three weeks ago I was re-learning muscle movement just to walk at all for the first few days.

So, slowly but shurly, getting better. I just have to make very, very sure I don't over-extend myself or bend the wrong ways (I am limited in certain motions for now), and I have to pace myself so I don't wear out. Unfortunately when I do wear out it happens quickly and I tend to crash from an energy standpoint. Other than that, I feel much better overall than I did before the surgery and, despite some surgical side effects that take time to work themselves out, I'm encouraged.

One of the things that has made this whole Artificial Disc Replacement surgery thing bearable is an online forum called the ADR Support Forum over at at ADRSupport.org. ADR is a newer technology in the United States, although it's been prevalent in Europe and other places for many years. There are lots of great people on the forum who have either gone though ADR surgery or who are looking into it and wanting to find out more, so it was a great resource for me pre-op and it still is after surgery. Highly recommended for reading and participation if anyone is considering an ADR procedure.

(This is not a techie post, but since there are many people out there asking how I am doing after surgery, I'll write about it here. It will also help me remember how things went and what happened when)

It's two days after my surgery, and I'm heading home this evening from the hospital, which I am looking forward to. This hospital is great (truly), but somehow the idea of having a fire in the fireplace and being in familiar surroundings is more appealing.

My body hurts, pretty bad. Like I got hit by a truck. but it's not the old pain, which is great. I can walk a short while (well, it's a lot like walking, but it's labored at best), and the physical therapist had me walk up and down a flight of training stairs. Who would have known it could be so much work? This is a lot like learning to walk all over again.

I was able to take a quick shower today (they do some fancy stuff with the incision when they close you up, and showering is actually a good thing to do once you're up to standing for that long). Thank goodness! The hot water helped relax some of my tense muscles.

Yesterday was hell. Starting with X-rays (which came out just fine), standing up was very painful - I had terrible muscle spasms in my lower back and legs, along with pain and nausea. Nothing like feeling nauseas and (forgive the graphical discussion) having to puke, which of course hurts like hell since your abdominal muscles contract hard each time. I'm glad that phase seems to be over with.

More than a few people have asked me what exactly they did to my back during this surgery. I've decided its not a big secret or anything, and that in fact it's really very interesting. First they removed the inter-vertebral disc in the lowest part of my lower back, at the L5/S1 space. Discs in your back are the softer tissues between the bony vertebrae that act as shock absorbers and allow your back to move in all directions. think of them as like a little pillow filled with squishy stuff (well, sort of). Mine was herniated (torn and pooching out into the space where the nerves run) and degenerated (loss of water and height, thinner than it used to be). In other words, pretty much all ragged and shot. The medical term for the thinning and drying out of the disc is "Degenerative Disc Disease." You body won't correct it on it's own - the physical damage is done and it usually just gets worse over time.

Once they removed the bad disc, they put in an artificial disc replacement implant - a spinal prosthesis, you could say. It's called a Kineflex lumbar artificial disc, and you can see a quick video of what it looks like and how it works here. The Kineflex device is a newer design, and I received it through a study program that is comparing the Kineflex disc to the Charite disc as part of a FDA clinical trial in the United States (email or call me if you want some details - contact info is in the right-side menu bar). I did a lot of research - on fusion options, artificial disc options, do-nothing options, individual surgeons, etc - before I decided to go this route. Artificial discs are - in the right patients - an alternative to fusion of the two bones. The ADR devices don't act like a shock absorber (neither does fusion, for that matter), but they do retain close to natural motion in the joint. As you might imagine, it's a fairly expensive procedure, and at least for now insurance companies in the United States are rarely paying for the procedure because it's too new for them (the first model to get FDA approval was the Charite and that was in the fall of 2004), and they instead prefer the fusion route. That's the way health care works.

And for those people looking here for technical posts - well, sorry. They'll be back soon enough.

Aches and pains and muscle spasms aside, I feel great. Today I had surgery and received a Kineflex lumbar artificial replacement disc. The doc says everything went perfectly. I'm in bed (and will be for a few days), but I took a few steps tonight.

I know it's completely sick that I'm online now, but they have free WiFi at the Hospital here in Everett. And if you're ever in need of a top-notch hospital with terrific staff, Evergreen Hospital Medical Center is freakin' great.

More on the implant device later sometime. I'm going to sleep.

If the knife doesn't kill me, the stress just might... On Wednesday at around 7am I'll be up in the Seattle area on a table in a surgical suite, and with any luck about an hour and a half (or so) later I'll be hallucinating and stuff in the recovery room as the proud and successful recipient of a artificial disc replacement at the L5/S1 joint in my lower back. I get to lay around in a hospital bed for a couple/few days, then can head home to lie around a whole lot more.

It's not quite Steve Austin style stuff, but the plan is to replace a collapsed, herniated and generally failed lumbar disc with a mechanical replacement. I'll be like a scaled-down version the bionic man. Not quite six million dollars worth of work (more like in the tens of thousands), but I am told they can rebuild me, they have the technology.

Truth be told, I'm just a bit scared. I've never been through surgery anywhere near this extensive before, and the decision to do this has been a long and tedious process involving a lot of risk and personal decisions. In the past I've had epidural injections of cortisone, lots of physical therapy, a minimally-invasive microdiscectomy surgical procedure, more physical therapy, medication, rest, exercise, you name it. But when a body part's shot, it's just shot.

Since then I decided - after meeting with a few highly regarded and experienced surgeons who told me I'm just delaying the inevitable fusion or artificial disc surgery - to stick it out for a while and see if I could just deal with the pain. The problem is, in order to do that I've had to keep myself from doing a lot of the things one needs to do in a normal life from day to day, as well as a lot of the things that help make life enjoyable, and that's no good.

So, here I am. Surgery could mean a great improvement in my quality of life. Of course it's not without risks (you really want someone operating on your spine?), and the past year has been mostly about deciding whether the risks of the procedure are worth the potential benefits and avoiding surgery. The pain has not improved much if at all, it always limits me, and at many times it's quite unbearable. Life's no good like this. So, it's time. My doctor is very experienced and I have lots of confidence in him. The facility is great. No more excuses.

As always seems to happen (Ask Murphy why, I sure there's a law about it), workplace and life situations, stresses and pressures are coming to a head right about the time I have to do this surgery, but I've decided that I really only get one life, and one body for that life. Jobs are something that can flex and be molded and true friends will wait, so while I'm wanting to get back to work and life as soon as it's realistic, I have to take care of this other stuff first, slow and steady as they say.

But I'm not just worried and scared. I'm also excited. The prospect of healing and being able to do many of the things I used to take for granted is truly something to look forward to - things like loading the trash cans into the truck to take to the dump, or walking the dog more than a quarter mile, or riding a bike or my motorcycle, or sitting in a chair for more than 15 minutes at a time, or even just being able to pick things up off the floor. 

That and not falling flat on my face in the hallway because I twist or step the wrong way, or because I drag my leg and pain shoots out my foot - That's just one of many things I am looking forward to no longer experiencing.

Anyhow, It'll be lighter than usual posting here probably for a little while 'til this is behind me. Maybe a little bit more to write over the next couple days, but some Wednesday I think I'll be rather out of it. Cross your fingers for me.

I had a layover at the Denver International Airport for several hours today, so I called my mom, who lives over near Boulder. She jumped in the car and drove over to the airport for coffee and lunch.

The Pur la France chicken pot pie in the main terminal upper level is highly recommended. And so are those deals where they announce they have over-booked and will give a round trip ticket to anyone who will volunteer to take the next flight. I got lunch with my mom, a free round trip ticket, first class seat for no extra charge on the next flight, and on top of that I am able to work right now in the airport during business hours instead of being on an airplane during the time that counts. So I was able to test a very cool new demo version of one of our security software products and test market it to my mom. She provides good feedback.

I sent her a Logitech Quickcam Pro the other day so we can do video instant messaging and calls with Live Messenger v8, and I was showing her how to use the notebook camera I bought for my end of the connection. That's her right there, snapshot taken with my notebook Logitech cam (which is a great little camera).

Well, off to North Carolina... Then back home to Portland.

Life, work and everything else is pretty crazy these days. I'm tentatively scheduled for some major surgery on my lower back in February, and my day (and evening) job is hectic and quite challenging in many ways (but I'm not complaining). Add everything else that happens in life into the mix, well... Recently it's been just a bit overwhelming at times.

I've traveled more than usual lately. One of the things I found made it more bearable (besides wearing my rigid back brace on airplanes - thank goodness for that stupid thing) is the new iPod video model I recently picked up. I discovered Battlestar Galactica, the revived show that everyone and their brother has apparently seen and raves about. Now I can see why they rave. I used to watch the original series when I was a kid - it was the greatest show on TV for a period of time, at least in my book. So, I purchased the pilot mini-series of the new, modern version via iTunes a couple weeks ago and watched it on my flights to Philly and Pittsburgh. What a great show. Definitely made a couple long flights much more sane. I downloaded the first season of the show the other night and will start watching that soon.

Some of you know I've had back problems for some time. I now have back surgery set for February 15th in Seattle. There are some tests that I have to get done before then, too (bone scan, labs, etc.). From what the doc says, I guess I will be relatively out of it for a while - at least a few weeks. It's quite an intimidating prospect, actually: I have never had major surgery before, so I am more than just a little nervous, even though the doc is terrific and has tons of experience. More on that later, maybe when the day gets closer. Afterward it will certainly make for an interesting and geeky bionic-man kind of tale, assuming all works out and the surgery actually happens. First things first.

Have you ever had major surgery? Care to share your experience? Mine will be an anterior (read: from the front) approach to the lumbar spine (at L5-S1), where they'll remove the disc and then do their handiwork. Not too common, but maybe there's someone else out there who's been through that sort of thing. If so, let me know.

Scott Adams says he recently quit caffeine. It wasn't exactly pleasant for him. Sounds like it still isn't.

I can relate. Except that I have not quit.

I drink coffee like it was, well, water. Like it's going out of style. It's easy to do - there's tons of free coffee everywhere I go. Which means work and home. And church sometimes. Free coffee everywhere.

Coffee is The Devil. So I am not sure why it's at church.

If I don't get my requisite dose of caffeine in the morning, I (seriously) can't see straight. Like as in my vision is blurry and my head hurts. That can't be good.

I stopped smoking a couple years or so ago. I've quit other things before, many years ago. But caffeine, well man oh man... Painful.

For the record, cigarettes was the hardest from a withdrawl perspective. Freakin' BRUTAL. It still is from time to time. I tell people I *stopped* smoking. I don't say I "quit." Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is forever. For today I am stopped, and it's better that way.

I guess I've learned that much fairly well. Heh.

But, back to coffee - It's the one vice I have left remaining in my life, really. I know I shouldn't drink as much as I do, but it just won't let me go. I've tried it - Ringing ears, blurry vision, massive headaches, general lethargy, an *inability* to sleep (seriously), and on top of that no more coffee, which I actually like (and I never actually liked smoking that much).

Argh. Decaf doesn't really appeal to me. All the decaf I've ever had tastes like crapola.

Any ideas?

I suppose there's a chance I'm the last person in the world to watch The Polar Express. I rented it tonight, I suppose due to a subconscious need to find a little holiday something or another.

If you haven't seen this movie, you're really missing out.

I can remember (vaguely) being the kid on this movie. Each of them, actually. I think that's why it's such a great story and film. And what a great message.

If you've not seen it, or if you know someone who doesn't believe anymore, rent the DVD, settle in for the night, and get a little bit of your life back. I think you'll be glad you did. This has to be one of the better movie experiences in some time. I can't believe I missed it til now.

And if you're lucky enough to be near an IMAX theater, you might be able to go see it there - in 3D, which Roger Ebert says is an incredible experience. Here in Portland, it's 2D at the OMSI OmniMax theater, but it's on the big dome screen.

I'm supposed to be on my way to Portland by now, to meet up with the youth group for a evening thing, Christmas shopping and stuff.

Supposed to be. Just one minor problem.

My truck's sitting out there in the driveway, with my laptop, camera, phone, and everything else I might possibly need tucked inside. The engine is all warmed up, the heated seats are turned on.

And the doors are all locked.

And the extra key? Yeah, let's not even go there.

To solve this problem, after failing miserably at the Magic Wire Coat Hanger Method, I brought out the smallest Yellow Pages book in the United States and looked for a local locksmith.

I'm starting to see why there are times when it's easier to live in or near the city. My first call was to a guy who, it turns out, is over in the state of Washington. Another call or two went unanswered. My next call was to a guy three-quarters of the way to the city, and he said he'd be heading my way. That's about 30 minutes away.

Days like this make me happy I have that Hemi V8 under the hood, what with the truck sitting there in the driveway at fast idle for the past hour and all.

But hey, with the PC laptop locked up in the car, at least I can be glad to have this Mac sitting on my desk in the corner over here. And I can be glad I have time to apply the gazillion software patches and updates I apparently missed since I last used it who-knows-how-long-ago.

I just hope there's enough gas left by the time they guy gets it unlocked to get me to the closest gas station.

Okay, I'm done. How's your weekend?

Just read a blog post over at HinesSight (a great Oregon-based blog, by the way) called "I pick up a hitchhiker." You know that feeling when you read or see something and you can literally feel your stomach bottom out? You know, the one's that stop you in your tracks and show you that your little world is not so bad after all?

Yeah, it's one of those. Read it, and remember as you go through like to take the time to stop, to take a personal inventory now and then, and to do what's right and good.

Today I once again had the pleasure of working closely with Cops on Top, a non-profit organization that undertakes mountain climbing expeditions to the highest points in the world in order to remember and recognized the sacrifice of police officers killed in the line of duty.

Today expedition teams from across the United States and Canada took off for their respective state or territory high points to remember the first responders who were killed helping others on September 11th, 2001. We've enabled the teams to dial in via mobile or satellite phones, and their audio blogs are posted to the Cops on Top climber's weblog.

Congratulations and thanks to all the police officers and their team mates who undertook expeditions today. As a former cop and someone who's seen the positive impact the Cops on Top program has, I can tell you it means a lot to many people.

From an IM session about 30 seconds ago:

Mary Beth says:
could u imagine at school if u had that in your room.. u would be the coolest chic in the dorm..

"I admitted I was powerless over my hair loss, that my scalp had become unmanageable..."

Yep. I'm in the cult, too. I accept it. Not much I can do about it, really. So, for those of us in that situation, here's a unique product that can help simplify our lives:

"The Coverup That's Got Nothing To Hide"
A perfect gift for directors, producers, band managers, aging performers, or anyone in the entertainment industry. Oh, and how about Father's Day?

Ok, so that's funny. And yes, they're actually for sale.

And for those of you lucky enough to keep your hair:

Good for you. Big deal.
But just so people don't assume you're covering up a deformity, I'm Not Bald™ hats are also available.

(These hats were found via an AdSense ad that showed up on my web site... Coincidence, or has Google figured out something we don't know about? Hmmmm....)

Recently I've had a number of interesting (albeit often protracted) conversations with people about processes in business, and how formal, written procedures and established processes can be good (I agree, to a point) and can also be very, very bad.

I'll explain in a minute, and while I'm at it I'll do some tangential opining and show why I think Sarbanes Oxley and other process-intensive initiatives and guidelines don't always accomplish what they set out to do. In fact, in the case of SARBOX, I'd argue it doesn't even come close to accomplishing what it was originally intended for. But that's another story...

First a reminder and a bit of clarity: This is a personal blog, so anything I write is my opinion and mine alone.

Saturday morning telephone support call: Failed process illustrated...

Saturday morning I woke up at a criminally early hour (for a weekend anyhow). Since sleep apparently wasn't in the game plan I decided to call Vonage to see if I could actually get someone on the phone, and if I could convince them to listen to me long enough to troubleshoot a hardware/firmware problem I've been having with my VOIP terminal adapter.

For the record, I like Vonage. A lot. I recommend them. I'll refer you if you email me and ask. But I'll be honest - I'm never too excited about calling them.

But on Saturday morning, that's what I did. After umpteen layers of voice menus and hitting random keys to get pretty much nowhere, calling back after being disconnected (don't hit 'zero' in Vonage's voice prompt system...), and then finally getting someone on the line (whom I could not understand and who it seems could not understand me during the entire painful process of validating my account, name, billing address, etc.), we finally got around to troubleshooting the problem:

Vonage Lady: "Yes, hello mister huge-hess...

Me: (silently) <grrrrrrr!!!>

Vonage Lady: "...how can I help you with today?"

Me: "Okay, so I am having a problem with my Motorola VT1005 terminal adapter, about once a day it loses its connection with Vonage and I have to pull the power plug and plug it back in to get it to work, and several times a day the network data port stops communicating completely so my computers here at home cannot get to the Internet. I have to unplug the Motorola device and plug it back in in order to resolve that problem, too, and then it happens again later, a few times a day."

Vonage Lady: "Okay, so what I understand from you is..." (reads back a different version of what I just said, but leaves out all the key points, like the whole data connection problem, etc)

Me: "That's partly correct, but the worst part of the problem is that several times a day..." (I explain the loss of LAN port connectivity issue again)

Vonage Lady: (seemingly ignoring what I just told her) "Okay, I would like you to go to your router and unplug the wire from the PC port and so you will have the modem and the wire, and the Vonage router and then your computer, and I want you to plug a wire into your computer okay can you do that and tell me?"

Me: (wondering if I - a high-tech IT guy with lots of experience fixing crap much more complicated than this - really understand what she means) "Umm, okay, so... You want me to plug the ethernet cable that goes from the Motorola device on the LAN side into my computer directly then?"

Vonage Lady: (pause, pause, pause) "Uhhh, yes, I need you to put the wire from the PC port in your computer."

Me: (deciding the only logical thing to do is to go with my gut) "Okay, so I have done that, okay I am ready for the next step."

Vonage Lady: (seems to be shocked that the next step is already starting) "Ohh umm, okay, one moment please... Okay, I need you to open your Internet Explorer, and in the address bar at the top of the screen..."

Me: (I'm starting to quietly get a little frustrated now) Okay my web browser is open, you want me to type in an address?

"... I would like for you to type this address in the address bar."

Me: (I'm already on the adapter's admin web page, I think to myself, she's gonna send me there - slowwly) "Okay, ready."

Vonage Lady: "Okay, One-Nine-Two..." (pause, pause, pause)... "No, wait... H-T-T-P --"

Me: "192.168.102.1?"

Vonage Lady: "No, no no. AICH-TEE-TEE-PEEEE, COLON, SLASH-SLASH, ONE-NINE-TWO..."

Me: (waiting for more numbers) "... ... ... okay, i got that part, you can keep reading it to me."

Vonage Lady: "DOT-ONE-SIX-EIGHT-DOT-ONE-ZERO-TWOOO-DOT-ONE"

Me: (Thinking to self: Is there an echo in here?) Okay, I'm there.

Vonage Lady: "Oh well, now we need to go to the admin.html page, so to do that please click in the-"

Me: "Okay, I'm there."

Vonage Lady: "Oh, okay... Do you see a button that says Restore Factory Defaults on the page there then?"

Me: "Yes. I have a fixed IP address though, so if we do this it will stop working 'til I reconfigure."

Vonage Lady: "That's okay, push that button and tell me when it's done."

Me: <click>

Vonage Lady: <she's now long-gone due to the fact that she just told me to kill my phone line>

Bad process and procedure? Most certainly. But what's the real problem in this story? Unfortunately it's one that we see happening more and more these days, over and over again with all the emphasis on building deep, complex, wide swaths of processes and supporting procedures.

I'm not here to argue against process. I'm here to argue for thinking.

When process hurts...

People have stopped thinking for themselves and doing critical analysis of the situation at hand. Instead, they read from a script. They follow a written procedure. They stay exactly between the lines, thinking the lines are the end-all-be-all of clarity in every situation. When I speak to people in my field about this, I describe it as being similar to walking around with blinders on.

We're suffering from a deficit of creative thinking and reasoning. But more on that in a few minutes.

What does this result in? Three things mainly:

First of all, people increasingly look at the world and the things going on around them as being bipolar in nature: black and white. In reality though, it's all about the infinite shades of gray. Oh, how simple the world might be if it was all pure black and white in nature, but in the real world it's just not so. Unfortunately, the desire to simplify things cognitively into black/white, us/them, good/bad is probably a greater part of the way people look at things today than it has even been.

Second, people have lost their sense of ownership and don't think for themselves. Pride goes soon after that. More and more the accepted method of teaching people how to do things has become the "hand-me-the-procedure" method. But, absolute processes and procedures are fundamentally flawed. There's simply no way to compute every possible outcome or input to a situation, yet we expect that by creating processes and procedures that *must* be followed, we can solve critical problems. The fact is that while they may ensure compliance most of the time, they can also often ensure lack of compliance some of the time - especially when the procedure or process doesn't exactly fit, but the person applying it doesn't stop to think about that fact. Or, even worse, they're not given the level of permission needed to stop, think, and evaluate situations on their own.

Third, we walk around with a false sense of confidence and safety. By assuming we are creating controls and processes to keep the bad things from happening, we do the one thing that police officers and security professionals have known better than to do for all time: We lure ourselves into that place where we believe everything will be okay, everyone will follow the rules, everything will be out in the open, the checks and balances will all work because the auditor signed a pieces of paper (not like the auditor had any real guidelines to audit against or anything...) and the bad guys won't be able to get away with anything anymore.

But it just won't work. Nope.

I'm sorry Senator, I have no recollection...

Example from the real world: The Sarbanes Oxley Act (SARBOX for short) was terrific for consultants, and lots of people are making lots of money off lots of companies that are shelling out big bucks for something that only minimally does what it needs to do (if that). The fact of the matter is that SARBOX resulted in huge expenditures and rampant development of crippling processes that offer little protection from bad, smart people who want to pull a fast one on investors. Even one of the sponsors of the act says it doesn't really accomplish what was originally intended. Hey, Senator, can we send you an invoice for the costs of this mandatory program that won't do what it's set out to do? Let me know. Thanks.

So, SARBOX is good for consulting companies, and expensive for business, and even though the rules and regs don't really fit small to mid-size businesses, they have to follow them anyhow. It doesn't really prevent another Enron from happening. In the end, it's costing the shareholders it was intended to protect a lot of money, and it's not really doing what it needs to do.

Hmm. That's like going to a store with no knowledge of tools, telling the sales person I need a something to help drive a nail into a wall, being sold a bunch of hard hats and yellow vests and thick gloves, along with a pneumatic nailing system and a whole stack of safety equipment and mandatory classes to make sure I use it right, and a certification that's required to issued by the government before I use it... And then six months later finding out there's this thing called a claw hammer...

Maybe we forgot what we set out to do. Maybe there's a short term memory problem involved. Or maybe too much vague, confuse, poorly-defined process got in the way of building (wait for it...) effective process.

This is starting to sound like "the meeting to plan the meeting."

Anyway, back to Vonage...

I made another call to Vonage (after I set up a fixed IP, reconfigured the TA, etc., and this time without getting disconnected), Communication went a little easier with the support worker I got this time, and within a minute of the same scripted process, I heard him pause for a moment. He stopped what he was doing and said, "Mr Hughes," (thought: do people who put time and effort into pronouncing names correctly also think more for themselves?), "I am going to transfer you to another number because I think they will be able to help you with this. I could go through all of the things I have here, but I really don't think they will help you."

There ya go, now that's thinking for yourself.

Within five minutes, another Vonage rep (who was quite knowledgeable and professional by the way) had deduced - after listening to my technical explanation and asking a couple follow-up questions - that my terminal adapter is pretty much on its last legs, and offer to send me a replacement.

I spent two hours on the whole deal, between the first phone call, phone menu prompt maze from hell, getting disconnected by the voice menu system, the first rep, getting disconnected by my hardware reset,. It took 10 minutes to solve it, as soon as I spoke to a couple people who were willing and able to think about the situation outside the script.

Now, I've picked on Vonage here just because they happened to be the company I called on Saturday. I have tales of woe from a slew of other tech support experiences, too. A friend just IM'ed me to vent about his phone call this morning to Dish Network. I like Vonage, I like their services, and I like their prices. I think they're doing a good job, and they are adding (literally) 10,000 new users a day (got that from the last guy I spoke to on the phone). They have more than a million users now. So don't take this to be a Vonage bashing post - it's not. But I do think it illustrates an important point.

So - what do we do now?

Okay, great so what are we supposed to do about the Blinders of process? It's simple: Let your employees take them off. Encourage them to!

In fact, it might be worth training employees in two basic skills that most people don't get any decent training in: Listening and troubleshooting. Think about how much time we spend learning to read and write, to speak in front of others, to read from the script. How much training in our lives, from school to professional adulthood, is spent learning how to listen well? How much time do we spend learning the nuances of critical thought or effective problem solving and troubleshooting?

Not much. Not enough, for sure.

But we'll have to save that topic for later.

I'm in the Bay Area, flew down here yesterday to surprise my dad for Fathers Day. Yes, it worked - he was suspicious I think, but he was surprised.

I've had calls today from a number of my "other" kids, and that's truly made my day. I'm lucky to have all these great people in my life. I'm not worthy. But I'm grateful.

Oh, and here are some links for dads and their kids, for your amusement and entertainment. Dads, use these to amaze your kids - they'll make you a "cool" dad, for sure.

• Visions Of Uhh Something - Cool optical illusion trick that will make them freak.
• Buy these T-Shirts together - "Geek - Son of Geek" shirts for dads and sons.
• The Sith Sense - Vader will read your mind - Star Wars and interactive 20 questions, fun fun fun.
• Creative Windows Error Messages - Geek out with the kids (but review the web site linked for PG-13 or other content before clicking).
• For the guys only - write your name in the snow - You gotta admit, this one is addictive. And it's funny. And it's cool.
• Subservient Chicken - Self-explanatory, or if not, click the link because you're missing something important.
• Subservient Stickman - Because every good internet phenomenon needs a sarcastic, sick sequel.
• Scariest Damn Thing I Ever Heard - You can save this one for when the holiday music starts later in the year. We all need a good one on standby for our arsenal.

A dedicated team of police officers is currently camped at 14,000 feet on Denali, also known as Mt. McKinley in Alaska. They are climbing the mountain in difficult weather on a memorial expedition, undertaken to remember the lives and sacrifice of two police officers who were shot and killed in the line of duty last year while trying to apprehend a shooting suspect in Phoenix.

You can use the power of the Internet to track the progress of the team as they attempt to carry a memorial plaque to the summit of Denali at 20,320 feet.

The PODCAST feed with enclosures is available here. They are audioblogging the climb with regular calls using a satellite phone whenever terrain and weather conditions allow. Their audioblogged updates are automatically posted to the climber's weblog on the Cops on Top web site. The team hopes to summit the highest mountain in North America on or around June 8th.

The team is made up of members of Cops on Top, a non-profit organization of peace officers who climb the worlds highest peaks to remember fallen officers, to ensure they are never forgotten. The expeditions are made to support the families and friends of the fallen officers, as well. I have the privilege of serving on the board and maintaining the web site for the organization.

For more information and the latest expedition updates, visit http://www.copsontop.com/

I've had the unfortunate experience of being on two vehicle accidents in the past couple of years - both were accidents that I could not avoid in the moment, and for which the law found me not at fault, but the insurance industry says were my fault nonetheless. No tickets issued, just a couple of against-the-odds situations, two wrecked vehicles and insurance premiums that rocketed somewhere into the upper stratosphere.

The first accident involved a deer in a curve in the roadway at night, and I had to choose in a split second whether to hit the deer (with a motorcycle, mind you), or to try to go around it. I chose the latter option and ended up on the shoulder of the roadway, which would have been just fine except that (unbeknownst to me) the shoulder turned into a ditch, which is not exactly a good thing when you're on a bike. Thank goodness I had on all the right gear - helmet, gloves, armored clothing. Anyhow, the lawman on the scene said it was a no-fault accident (and tried to talk me into joining the reserves) and my insurance agent told me (dead-seriously), "You should have hit the deer." Jeez, never mind the fact that I walked away from it relatively unharmed, which would almost certainly not have happened hat I hit that deer (and for the record, I don't give a darn one way or the other whether or not Bambi was hurt or killed). The law saw it one way, but my insurance company uses a book of rules, rather than real-world common sense: My insurance rates went up, because I didn't hit the deer.

The second one involved a semi truck coming down a hill (again late at night) through some switchback curves, heading at straight at me in my lane as I was going up the hill. I swerved hard to the edge of the road to avoid being hit by the semi (I seriously though that was "it"), and somehow he (I am making a gender assumption here, please forgive me...) got back over toward his lane far enough to where the vehicles did not touch. He kept right on going and my smaller vehicle fishtailed a couple times before sliding off the road, head-on into the hillside where it flipped and rolled. It was truly crazy. Anyhow, the law came on scene, took a look around, made sure I was not drunk (I have not consumed alcohol in more than eight years so no chance of that) and said "not your fault" based on all the evidence (semi truck skid marks, etc), but the insurance company (not my agent this time, it was an adjuster) told me I probably should have hit the semi truck (What?!?!?), and again jacked up my rates.

Now, all-in-all I'd much rather pay obnoxious insurance premiums than be dead, so I guess the tradeoff is not all that bad in the big picture. But let me tell you - my rates skyrocketed and became what I would call truly outrageous.

Unfortunately, when it comes to my own personal finances, while I am quite responsible I am not one to put the pressure on and fight hard for better prices as a matter or course. I will do it in my job (where the company is the beneficiary of my efforts and it's not personal), but for some reason it's different when I am negotiating and shopping around for myself. For the record, I consider this a weakness in my own character, and I've progressively gotten better in recent years, but I still have to occasionally remind myself to look out for me in my spare time, if you will.

Anyhow, I woke up the other day pretty pissed off about my insurance bills, which is not a pleasant way to wake up, so I decided to do something about it.

Long story short (way too late, I know), I just changed insurance companies, from American Family to AIG, and on an apples-to-apples auto policy (same coverage, same accidents, etc) I cut my rate almost in half. Not only that, I was able to get lots of rate quotes and apply online, and once I had decided which company to go with, I just called them up and completed the deal (Not that I needed to, I could have closed the deal online, too, without ever having spoken to a person, but that would not have been as much fun because the helpful lady I spoke to at AIG was born the exact same day as me and was really, really nice on the phone - which does make a difference in an all-else-equal world.)

In the process I learned a few things about buying insurance:

• You must shop around to find out what kind of deals you will get. They vary greatly from company to company.
• Always check with your bank to see if they have a bank-sponsored insurance program, that's what I did (I bank with Wells Fargo online and just clicked through their link to get a quote at AIG). It saved me a significant amount over the insurance company's default premiums to go that route. The lady on the phone told me that was the way to go, among several other useful tidbits.
• If you have multiple insurance products (homeowners, umbrella policy, life insurance, etc) always see if putting them under one carrier will save you money - it almost always does.
• Ask lots of questions about specific details - towing coverage, death and dismemberment, thing like that are often double-covered if you have separate policies from work or health insurance that provide the same coverage, so don't buy the same thing twice if you don't need it - but make sure you know exactly what you have and what you are buying. If an insurance company's agents are not helpful, you should consider going elsewhere.
• If your rates have gone up substantially at your current company because of accidents or claims, it's probably worth shopping around for a new company. It's a competitive market and just like other businesses, insurance companies know that if they jack up rates, a substantial number of their customers will pay the higher rates and never look around at options.

At any rate, I learned something in the process and thought others might, as well. All I know is that I just added a chunk of change to my monthly grocery budget by doing a small amount of research and online work, plus one phone call. It was a good investment.

Here's Me (right), my mom, my brother Dave and his daughter, Dara. All together in one place for Mother's Day 2005.

A couple days ago, I planned a bit of a scheme to surprise my mom on Mother's Day this weekend.

Today I flew from Portland to Denver and then got a car and drove up to Boulder. Only my brother knew I was coming, because I called him and told him a couple days ago when I got the tickets.

My mom and stepdad just moved to Colorado from New Mexico this past week, and when I arrived at the new house and snuck in the front door, Mom was putting dishes in cabinets. I stood behind her as she was talking to my stepbrother's wife, Kate, and put a hand on her shoulder. She just kept talking to Kate, and after a few seconds stood and turned around to see who has placed a hand on her.

She was (to say the least) surprised. The look on her face was more than worth the place ticket and the fact that today I flew on my ninth airplane in the past six days, and tomorrow I'll have to add one more to the list.

Next trip - dad's place in California. Need to plan that one soon. He reads this now and then so it won't be a surprise, but I'm overdue to pay a visit, for sure.

In December I had a minimally-invasive surgical procedure done on my lower back to try to help correct a herniated disc down there in my spine at the L5/S1 joint (that's just below hip level). The end result was a limited success, and I am pretty much back where I was before the procedure nowadays, as far as the back/leg pain, numbness and reduced motor skills in my legs go.

The original procedure was no guarantee, but we had high hopes. I decided a minimally-invasive procedure - one that would not require any permanent changes, cutting or physical limitations - was a good first shot to take. It just didn't work out as well as I would have liked.

So, I have seen three highly-recommended doctors recently to talk with them about what can be done to help. I am in some level of pain 24/7, I wake up several times every night from the pain, and I am basically restricting my own activity so much that I am becoming fairly miserable and generally unhappy in life. I can't stand for any period of time, I can't stay seated for very long, walking any real distance is painful, lying down requires me to shift around constantly (hence waking up from pain), and really the only position that I can get into that gives me some relief is whatever position I am not in at the time.

The doctor who did the procedure in December told me he thought there were a few remaining possibilities for me: Live with it (always an option), maybe do a microsdiscectomy (an iffy proposition), bone fusion of the joint, or artificial disc replacement.

And, as it turns out, each of these three doctors I consulted with came to pretty much the same conclusion: The only thing that will work for me at this point is removal of the bad disc, followed by either fusing the joint or replacing the disc with an artificial one. Both methods have been around for a while. Artificial discs received FDA approval in the U.S. last year.

It's been very interesting (and enlightening) to visit three neurological surgeons with no information other than my MRI films and a verbal history of my pain and medical care, to see what they would tell me. I did not tell any of them what the other docs said or thought or diagnosed, but all three came up with the same result. That's encouraging, at least in terms of knowing where I really stand. Of course, the idea that I need a fairly major surgery to be better is a little intimidating. But, one further point of encouragement is the fact that all three doctors were quite confident that surgery would make a huge difference in my quality of life. All three said that I am practically the perfect candidate to benefit in a huge way from the procedure.

Then I started thinking about whether it's the "right" thing to do - Is it right to cut into your body and remove parts or put in fake parts? These thoughts keep going through my mind and I'm actually a bit surprised. I guess I just never had the chance to think them before now.

So now comes the decision. Oh boy, this is definitely not the easiest part. Deciding which doctors (it takes two - a vascular surgeon as well as the neurological surgeon), when to have it done (if at all), and which procedure is the best option for me. Not to mention the health insurance company part - who knows what they'll have to say.

A fusion means six to nine months of take-it-easy time, and a longer period of relative inactivity (that includes work). An artificial disc does not have the healing time (there is no fusion process to worry about) and so return to work/normal life is much faster. Fusion has been around for a long, long time. Artificial discs are newer - especially in the U.S. - but have been around for about 15 or so years.

The actual surgical procedure followed to do either the disc replacement or the fusion is pretty much identical. The only real difference is what goes between the vertebrae once they get to where they're headed - some metal cages, some bone, or the artificial disc. Getting in there and closing up is virtually the same.

Anyhow, if anyone who reads this also happens to have received an artificial disc (or knows someone who has), please let me know - I'd like to communicate with you. Also, anyone who's had a fusion, same deal - please contact me by commenting on this post, or click the mail icon over in the navigation sidebar.

I've spent part of the last couple days walking around marinas on the Columbia River here in Oregon looking at boats - boats in slips, boats on the water, boats for sale. I even stopped by a boat dealer in Beaverton yesterday and got accosted by the Boat Salesman. Just like the car salesmen...

I have boat fever recently. Want boat - Must resist. But then again, the more I look, the more it makes sense. It would be a great way to get out and have fun on the weekends.

Good thing I have to work the next five days. I need the separation.

On the other hand, I've almost decided it's time for me to graduate out of the motorcycle period of my life. My back, which is almost certainly going to require more surgery, is keeping me from riding it in this freaking beautiful weather, and the loan payment plus insurance is money that I could be using more effectively, since the motorcycle is just sitting there. It used to be my weekend fun, but that was a while ago.

I really should sell it. But I love riding that bike. I just wish I could ride it without killing my back.

Boats or bikes or none of the above?

Ahhh, decisions...

Update on my back surgery stuff for the four or five of you who are following and care...

Well, since my back surgery procedure things in December, I have had some relief from the pain I was experiencing. I even had a couple of days where I felt better than I can ever remember feeling.

But overall, while things are certainly better in many ways, overall it's not been better enough, if you will, to call it resolved. I have been doing physical therapy for two full months and the pain has increased and decreased somewhat a number of times. But overall, it's still a problem - weakness in both legs, pain reaching from my back into my legs and feet, and enough pain to keep me up at night and severely limit my ability to do the regular day-to-day things I need (and want) to do in life.

The procedure that was done in December was a minimally-invasive procedure, in which the doc went inside the L5/S1 disc and removed some of the material there, which was to allow some of the bulging material that is impinging on my spine to be reduced, relieving pressure on the spinal nerves, and therefore relieving pain. Unfortunately, while it's better at times than it was, it's still a pretty serious problem.

So, the doc ordered a new MRI a couple weeks ago. We saw the films the other day. And it looks like its time to see another surgeon. At least this surgeon says so.

Unfortunately, the images are not all that good. The disc appears to have extruded more material at some point, so the problem and pain are in the same general location (same joint), and it feels and acts very much like what I was experiencing before the procedure, except that the pain moves from one leg to another somewhat regularly. I guess after 12 or so years of wear and tear, this is just not going to be a simple process.

So, off to a few more docs I go. The minimally invasive route was, I think, worth it for a first step, but now it's time to see what - if anything - can be done to better solve the problem. My current doc has his recommendations (microsurgical discectomy to cut out and remove the herniation), and we'll see what other docs think is the best thing to do.

I just finished a 6-day pack or methylprednisolone, which is a super-anti-inflammatory thing. For a couple of days, when the daily dose was high, I felt fairly okay. Now that it's all gone and all I am taking is the regular anti-inflammatory stuff, it's back to being pretty darned uncomfortable and at times pretty painful.

I don't expect to be made completely better - not at all. But it would be nice to be able to lean over the sink when I wash my hands and brush my teeth, or to be able to bend over to put on my socks and whatnot. Not to mention the fact that things like pulling weeds in the garden can't last for more than 5 or 10 minutes on a good day, and if I actually decide to pull the weeds, I'll pay for it for days.

Again, I am glad I went with the minimally invasive route first. It has helped me overall, and generally speaking I am in somewhat less pain, which is a good thing. I'll just have to move on from here and see what's the next best thing to do.

You ever have one of those moments, probably on a weekend, where you wake up and realize that there are like a million things left undone and waiting for you to tackle them? I don't mean that panicky feeling you get when you suddenly realize you're in way over your head... I've experienced that, too, and this is something very different.

I'm talking about the moment where you suddenly realize you can't possibly end up bored, because there are so many thing to do and look forward to.

I just had one of those moments. Wild.

Many of the things on my "clarity list" are related to home - things like finishing the bonus room completely (I am 90% done, and have been at that stage for several months). Stuff like finishing my Media Center setup, instead of running it in parts with wires everywhere. Building a shed. Fencing a yard. Adding a deck.

And other bigger things, too - things having to do with life, work and relationships. Possibilities.

It's funny, I guess, that my favorite room in the house has all but the last row of floating laminate wood floor laid down, has untrimmed windows and baseboards, and needs to have the last third of the lighting installed. Not to mention that the "furnishings" consist of my dining room table (which really should be in the dining room instead), a 15-year-old recliner and three bean-bag chairs. Plus my guitar - the acoustics in this room are awesome, but 14-foot vaults will do that for you.

I really need to learn to understand paint colors and how to do something other than one plain-old color in a house. Phil Weber's Flickr pics of his living room and media center show that someone somewhere knows what they are doing and have a better eye for that kind of stuff than I have. I don't want purple, especially, but that's not the point... I'm more of an "off-white-everywhere" style painter. I either need professional help (yeah, yeah - don't get started...) or else I need to marry someone with a knack for this. Hey Phil - who picked your colors? 

Anyhow, days like this are nice to have. It's so much better to be able to look at things as possibilities than as difficulties or problems.

Dumm deee dumm dee dahhhh...

Seems like I need some "switch" background/theme music or something...

(oh, and don't read *too* much into this, heheh)

Forgive the non-tech post, but it’s a pretty good day today and apparently there are a large number of people who are keeping an eye out to see how I am doing after my back surgery last month. I have not posted much about it here, preferring to suffer in private, but for the first time today I feel like I am turning a corner, and it’s a great relief.

I’ve spent the past three weeks fighting what at times has been extreme pain, quite debilitating and agonizing. I had surgery on my L5–S1 disc, which was herniated and pushing pretty hard on the sciatic nerve roots in that joint. The condition made for chronic pain and occasional agonizingly painful periods where I would be left effectively non-functioning. It needed to be fixed.

I had the procedure done three days before Christmas, which was an interesting decision in and of itself, one that had more to do with insurance and coverage before the end of the year than anything. At any rate, after a couple days of feeling pretty good post-op, things got terribly painful the day after Christmas.

Apparently that’s not too unusual. It tends to get worse before it gets better, they say. But that doesn’t help me feel any better. And it got a lot worse for a while.

I have spent the past few weeks with friends living at my house to take care of me and carry me around, followed by dragging myself out now and then to do something like buy food or go to work for a little while. Last week I decided to work from home the last half of the week. I found I could do most (not all) of my work in bed, and that as long as the pain was reasonable I could be fairly productive. But staying at home all the time makes me a little stir crazy.

I went to work the past two days, found a couch to lie on with my laptop instead of sitting in a chair, and confirmed that taking it easy was – in fact – a good thing to do. Today I decided to stay home again and work from here (conference calls, VPNs, remote desktops, instant messaging and email are all amazing tools), and to go to my physical therapy appointment this afternoon.

Today is the first day in three weeks that I can say my pain level is below a 5 on a 10 point scale, all morning. That’s progress. Not to mention relief. There’s nothing quite like living in fear the pain will never go away, especially when you’re not sleeping and can’t put on your own clothes.

But the fact is it’s more about progress than about perfection here. And God willing, if today is an indicator, things are starting to look up – slow improvement, but looking up.

Of course, I have physical therapy in an hour or two, and who knows how I’ll feel after that. Probably worse, but if it means things get better down the road, I will just continue to suffer. With a smile on my face, of course.

My spirits were lifted this evening when I received this email from the Google AdSense Support team in response to the AdSense donation idea that Scott and I had – it’s just one step, but it’s a very positive one!

I know it’s not a trivial task for Google to put something like this in place, but I hope it happens, as do a number of others – It can make a very real difference!

<Fingers Crossed>

---

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 18:40:10 -0800
From: "Google AdSense" <adsense-support@google.com>
To: greg@greghughes.net
Subject: Re: [#18769680] AdSense donations for disaster relief - Google can make this easy - please read

Hello Greg,

Thank you for this excellent idea. A number of other AdSense publishers
have also brought your blog to our attention, and I have alerted the
AdSense team to your efforts.

As individuals, and as a company, we are committed to doing whatever we
can to assist with the tsunami relief effort. Google, as you know, has
recently set up www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html to aid our users who
are looking for more information and for ways to help, and we are
currently examining a number of other ideas.

Please know that I have forwarded your suggestion on to the appropriate
persons at Google, and they are currently investigating the feasibility of
such an endeavor. I will follow up as soon as I have more information on
this matter.

On behalf of the AdSense team, I would like to thank you again for
proposing this selfless measure and for your generous commitment to donate
your AdSense revenue to those affected by the tsunami.

Sincerely,

Ben
The Google AdSense Team

---

Merill Fernando lives in Sri Lanka, a country that was very hard hit by the tsunamis, and he exchanged emails with me this evening after he took the time to send a few kind words in response to the little bit of help this weblog has provided. He has also posted on his weblog about what even a small contribution can do to help people in need. You should read it, especially if you think you can’t afford to give enough to help others. Even if all you have to give is a five bucks, Amazon.com will let you easily donate whatever you can afford. Merill’s site will show you how much just $1 will buy.

Again, we are calling on all bloggers who use AdSense to pledge to donate your AdSense revenues for December or whatever time you wish to the relief and aid effort. Merill pointed the idea out on his weblog and agrees that it is a great idea – so please contribute and contact Google to let them know you would like them to help make this happen by providing an AdSense administrative option to donate funds at the end of this month. Whether or not Google participates in this effort, I am donating my revenue check. Please consider doing the same.

Together we can make things happen – that’s part of the power of the blogosphere. Give now, post your thoughts and plans to your blog, and contact others that can make a difference and ask them to help.

If you’re looking for places to give, just go here. And thank your for doing your part.

I have an idea, and a burning need to do something more to help those in need. I’ll email Google with this request, but I’m going to post it here, and encourage you to do the same thing on your site.

UPDATE: Google AdSense Support responded to this idea, and it’s at least possible!

I want all my AdSense revenue pending at the end of the year to go to help relief efforts in South Asia where the earthquakes and tsunamis have caused such devastation. If you use AdSense, I want you to pledge to do the same thing.

I think Google should make this an easy option for anyone with an AdSense account, and that they should do it in time for all of us to make our donations now, before the end of the year. It would be so easy for me to give that money to those in need, and Google can help many others do the same thing. Put a simple checkbox on the AdSense admin site that lets me choose to donate my AdSense funds. Do it for everyone.

Are you willing to donate your AdSense revenues? Comment here. Or post it on your blog or web site. Email Google and make it happen.

Scott Hanselman gave me this idea when he said he was thinking about donating his AdSense revenues. I had been thinking the same thing. Scott’s a good, kind person and I am willing to bet there are thousands more like him out there that would like to be able to do the same thing.

Hey Google people - call me if I can help make this happen. Seriously. My phone number is 503–419–6495. I have lots of time right now, as well as a little AdSense revenue to share. So, I hope you’ll help me help someone else. Anyone else who wants to help can call me, too. Make my phone ring.

Update – Several bloggers have already posted and signed on to pledge their earnings to recovery efforts. I'll donate mine whether Google makes it easy to do through them or not - but it would be awfully cool if they can make it possible. Making it easy for people will mean more people will participate.

Also – Turns out there’s no better way to mark one year of blogging at greghughes.net than doing something to help others. Just realized it was one year of blogging here on the 27th… People, please contact Google and ask them to make this happen, and then post a link on your blog, and if you use adsense, I encourage you to join us in donating!

I had a procedure done on my back last week and things were going quite well, up til last night.

Now the pain is back - hopefully it’s temporary. It’s pretty darn bad, I can tell you that. I had been taking it easy, and sat in a chair here at home. I stood up and the pain shot through my back and legs. I called the doctor’s office this morning, and apparently (and unfortunately) this happens sometimes. So now its ice at 20–minute intervals and staying in bed for me, until the doc says otherwise.

Not fun. Not fun at all.

A massive earthquake hit today in south Asia. People need help. This is the right time to stop what you normally do, get out of your little digital world that you assume is all-defining and all-encompassing (it’s not, really) and come back to reality. Preferably, you’ll participate in that reality by helping someone else. Yes, I’m being a little preachy here. Get over it, already – this is much more important than personalities.

If you’ve never given before to help people in a time of crisis, I urge you to stop surfing now for a few minutes, and to give what you can. I’m serious. Very real people are experiencing very real pain, and you can do your part to help them recover.

The International Red Cross is taking donations to help the thousands and thousands of people hurt and affected by this earthquake and the resulting tidal waves.

Update: Nick Bradbury is donating everything he earns from TopStyle and FeedDemon between now and the new year to the International Red Cross to help with disaster relief. Order a copy and you get great software and help others.

Update: The Command Post has a list of different ways you can help.

The news about this is everywhere – where are you? 

From the International Red Cross web site:

Powerful earthquake, tsunamis strike South Asia, leaving thousands dead, injured and missing

Sunday, December 26, 2004 — The largest earthquake to strike the globe since 1964 has caused devastating tsunami waves that have killed thousands in south Asia. The 8.9-magnitude quake hit December 26 off the coast of Indonesia, triggering these extremely large waves that have brought massive flooding, damage and loss of life in the region.

Waves as high as 20 feet have crashed into the coastal areas near the Bay of Benegal. Among the worst affected countries are Sri Lanka and India, as well as Indonesia, Maldives and Thailand. Reports are that thousands of people are missing, and it is possible that the number of dead may tragically rise in the coming days.

International Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in south Asia have begun to mobilize staff and volunteers to affected areas to assist with the immediate needs. Emergency assessment and first-aid teams have already reached some of the affected areas.

“The situation is fluid, with so many people affected in so many areas of southeast Asia, and it is likely that relief teams there may need many different types of assistance in the coming days,” said Matthew Parry of the International Disaster Response Unit at the American Red Cross.

The American Red Cross continues to maintain contact with its partners on the ground and is prepared to support operations with relief supplies, financial assistance or personnel as requested by our sister International Red Cross and Red Crescent societies there.

You can help those affected by this crisis and countless others around the world each year by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance, and other support to those in need. Call 1-800-HELP NOW or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Contributions to the International Response Fund may be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013. Internet users can make a secure online contribution by visiting www.redcross.org.

Around my place we say “Merry Christmas.” But whatever holiday you celebrate in your life, I hope it’s a good one for you and yours.

Today at home it’s a fire in the fireplace, with posole** cooking on top of the stove, and over the next couple of days it’ll be wrapping presents, going to church, spending time with friends, and remembering what the holiday is all about.

“Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have not coveted anyone's silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

The guy who spoke those words was a good and decent man, and he was taught them buy another guy – who was also a good and decent man, and whose birthday we just happen to celebrate this weekend.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

** Here’s my Posole recipe, archived here for myself so I won’t lose it, and for anyone else who’s interested. This way I won’t have to call mom and ask (again) next time, heh:

• One #10 can (108oz) Hominy (Mexican style preferred, white is also ok)
• Two large yellow onions, sliced and cut
• One tablespoon (or so) minced garlic
• One teaspoon dry oregano (Mexican oregano if you can get it)
• One quart (or less if you prefer) of frozen or canned green chiles, diced, preferably hot or medium strength (not jalapenos – use real green chiles)
• Salt (plenty)
• Pepper (plenty)
• One pork tenderloin, about 5 pounds
• Olive oil

In a large stock pot, combine the hominy, onions, garlic, oregano, and green chile. Fill with water to cover the ingredients, plus some more (don’t get to worried about the water – just make sure it’s pretty full). Salt and popper the heck out of it. Turn on the heat and bring to a boil. Once it boils, turn the heat back to simmer the stuff.

Cut the pork into small cubes or similar shape pieces (like you can cut pork into cubes, yeah…).In a frying pan, heat some olive oil and brown the pork slowly, add some salt and pepper.

After browning the pork, add it to the stock pot contents, and stir the meat in.

Now comes the hard part – leave it alone until the cows come home. That translates to anywhere between say six hours and overnight. Trust me – let it cook down. Add some water as needed.

And don’t be stingy with the salt and pepper – you’ll need it.

Well, it’s a done deal. I had my back surgery today, and now I am resting at home.

And – miraculously – most of the pain in my legs and lower back is gone!

You never really know how much pain you’re in, I think. until it goes away. Then you realize what you were missing out on. I am pinching myself every few minutes just to make sure this is all real and that I am not just dreaming… It’s truly amazing.

I’m not a proponent of surgery unless it’s absolutely needed. As testament to that fact, I have been dealing with back pain for several years, trying to deal with it in a variety of ways. As I said yesterday, it was time.

And so today I can stand on my own two feet without much pain at all, I can balance better, and I feel just great.

Really, it’s incredible. With any luck, as I heal things will stay this way.

The most amazing Christmas gift I could possibly get this year came early. My doctor (Dr. Olson) and my friend/neighbor (Mike, who spent the whole day driving me to Salem for the surgery, waited around for several hours and then drove me back home, all while making sure I was doing okay) really and truly provided me with something I needed today.

I have an attitude of gratitude, as they say – and am happy beyond belief.

Mid-day Wednesday I’ll be getting drugged up and surgically repaired. The time’s come for a microdiscectomy for my back problems (which I have written about here at a high level in the past). After trying exercise (ouch), stretching, medications, therapy, hanging upside down, chiropractors, you name it… Well, it’s just time.

What many people don’t realize is how incredibly debilitating back pain can be. My condition is a herniated disc at the L5–S1 joint, which is in the lower part of the small of your back. The disc is that flexible shock-absorber that sits between your vertebrae. The herniated part is bulging out and pressing on the roots of two nerves that go all the way down my legs and into my feet. When I have back pain, it’s not just in my back – It’s shooting from my back, down my legs, and out the tips of my feet. At times it’s the kind of pain that keeps me from being able to get up off the floor, or even from being able to move without screaming. At other times the symptoms are clumsy legs and twinges of shooting pain. Other times my back just aches.

Anyhow – after nearly 10 years off-and-on of real pain and discomfort, I am looking forward to the decent possibility of lessening the pain and related problems.

People have been asking me if I am nervous. Truth be told, I’m really not. I trust my doctor and have confidence there. It’s not complicated surgery, and I will be home under my own power the same evening. I won’t be able to drive myself because of the medications they use for surgery, but hey, that’s why God made friends, to drive you back and forth when you’re in bad shape, right?

So, with any luck, by this time tomorrow night I’ll be feeling less pain than I am now.

If that should come to pass, it will be the best Christmas present I could possibly wish for. I’ve been good this year, so I hope I get my wish.

 – gh

Well, for those who have followed (for some reason) my back ailments here, an update: Surgery will happen on December 22nd.

So, Percutaneous Discectomy it is – removal of some of the material inside the disc at the L5/S1 space to relieve pressure on the nerve root there. The doctor will remove some of the material from inside, the bulge moves back toward the void left by the removal, and the pressure is reduced. Hopefully.

Nice thing is, it’s outpatient day surgery – I’ll walk out and go straight home within a few hours of arriving there. I’ll also be wearing a back brace for a while and will have to do several weeks of physical therapy (whoopee), but in the end I am hopeful it will all be worth it.

I’ve done pretty much everything I can in order to try to make things work without surgery, so this is pretty much it. While I am not big on the idea of surgery, I am very much looking forward to the possibility of some relief and maybe even getting back to where I can physically do the things I used to do.

(Or, "Isn't it interesting the ways we meet the coolest people nowadays?")

The world's changing, and changing fast. How we meet people, how we get to know each other, how we communicate and stay in touch over vast distances, how we immediately connect with someone around the world... It not like it used to be when we (those of us who remember the first skateboards, that is) were kids.

Nowadays they have extra wheels on skateboards. We have instant communication of several types, and we share our lives online for others to read and relate to. Sometimes we meet people online that just seem to click, with whom we have something in common. People we want to meet in the carbon world, not just in the silicon one.

That happened to me.

For quite a while now I've linked to Jill's web site, which chronicles her family's progress as they remodel a fixer upper in a Portland suburb. I started reading her web site a while back when the writing style caught my eye. I saw it on ORBlogs, a web site that aggregates blog entries from people around Oregon, or who used to be here.

Charlie, Jill's husband, is a cop. I used to be a cop. Jill's stories (with the occasional Charlie prose tossed in) are hilarious, and paint a great picture of life in general, not just the process of repairing their rather unique fixer upper home, which she nicknamed their own little Kosovo.

Jill and Charlie also embedded into me the term "big ass honking truck," to the point where I have adopted it as my own, because it so perfectly describes what I recently acquired (yes, I know I owe pictures, they're coming...).

Anyhow, it also turned out (in this big small world we live in) that someone I work with and respect greatly is friends with Jill and Charlie. Funny how that happens, eh? You meet in the ether and someone made of carbon makes the connection.

I drove my Big Ass Honkin' Truck to Kosovo today, to go say hi to Jill and Charlie, to show off the Hemi and built-in bluetooth, and to tour the fixer-upper. It's quite a project, but a good one. The front deck is awesome. The fireplace is great. The trim is very nice. Downstairs is ready to paint. It's going to turn out to be very nice, I can tell.

It's fun to meet people you have something in common with - Things like a desire to write in order to clear your mind of the clutter and to think new thoughts is a process that drives bloggers everywhere. I also have a bunch of unfinished home projects (upstairs floor and painting in the "bonus" room, deck plans, yard, fencing... Ummm, you get the idea). Cops always have something in common that others can't quite experience unless you've been there - not in a bad way, just a real-world, seen-it-all kind of way.

So, I'm really glad I got to meet them in person. And the "kids," if only briefly (Random inside info: The anti-fart spray was a bonus, but vegan food will do that to ya. Go-Go Speed Racer. Heh. But alas, another story, for another time. And hey General - take your time and driving will come easily. You'll be fine.).

Have you ever "met" someone online, wished you knew them in person, but never got around to meeting and shaking hands? Stop putting it off. You'll know if it's the right thing to do. Do it and you'll be glad.

I know I am.

Recently I described how, due to unexpected circumstances that unfolded over the past week or so, I had to find a new vehicle. Well, I did my research, made up my mind, and bought one.

I decided to go the Big-Ass Honking Truck route. A Dodge Ram truck. With a Hemi. With heated leather seats. With cup holders. And with Bluetooth.

Yeah, I said Bluetooth. Built straight into the truck.

That's right, my Big Ass Honking Manly Ranch Truck has the ultimate geek-out feature: Bluetooth built into the rear-view mirror (cabin microphone, computer and two push-button controls) and the stereo system (for high quality audio output to the speakers, text menus that compliment the female voice that prompts you to speak your commands, and more computer stuff). So, I have complete speakerphone voice-recognition and command control of my mobile phone.

I'm talkin' geek-out in a big way, heheheh... It's awesome.

The system is called U-Connect, and Chrysler has taken it from being an add-on knock-off style option to a fully-integrated system. It's all part of the car's fine fit and finish. In fact, if no one told you it was there, you'd probably never notice it til the phone rang and the system switched the audio from your in-dash stereo system over to the phone.

U-Connect is very cool. Friendly voice prompts walk you through the menus, and voice recognition software allows you to set it up, pair it with your Bluetooth phones (yes, you can use multiple), create speed dial voice entries, and all the other nifty stuff you'd expect from a relatively high-end piece of software and hardware that does the Bluetooth boogie. And the audio is very good, even when driving down the road. It's really quite cool, and on top of that it's extra safe - two small buttons on the rear-view mirror and your voice are all that's needed to make the system work.

Oh, and the rest of the truck is great, too. Did I mention it's got a Hemi? Woah, dude, a Hemi... Heh... Sweet...

Yeah, sure, the gas mileage kinda sucks, but everything else about it is awesome. As much as I drive, comfort and convenience matter these days, so I am glad for the extras. It's the best of both worlds: Geeky and Tough. So, it's all good.

I have to make an unplanned vehicle purchase sometime in the next week or so, and I will be heading out of here in a few minutes to start looking around at what's available these days. I have no idea at this point what I am interested in.

But maybe someone who reads this will have some ideas of their own they want to share.

What I need and who I am:

I'm a guy who lives in the woods with a house at the end of a long gravel driveway. It snows up here. I drive around 80 miles a day going to and from work, and in the past I have used my SUV to pull a trailer.

I am not an anti-SUV person, and you won't be able to convert me to the hatred side of the force on principle. I am open to looking at what ever works for me (in other words, I am willing to be "for" a vehicle type, rather than being opposed to it).

I sometimes transport as many as four other people in my car. It has to be safe. After recent experiences, I'd say it has to be super, super safe (as Bill Gates would say). Let's just say I am glad/lucky to be alive and leave it at that.

So anyhow - If you're a Consumer Reports nut, have recently shopped for vehicles, or otherwise have some knowledge, experience, or opinions that you think would be valuable to me in my vehicle search, either email me (use the little envelope thing in the copyright message at the bottom of this web page), comment here where others can see (I will get an email instantly with your comment), or if its Saturday afternoon, you can even try calling my cell phone (hey, call even if you don't know me, it's all good) at 503-970-1753. Let me know what you think.

While I will be making my own decision on a purchase, I think it would be great to get some ideas from others.

Triva Note: Most of the feedback I get through this site seems to come in the form of direct emails, along with a few comments left on the site's comment system (see the bottom of this entry and look for the  icon and click the link to leave your thoughts).

Every now and then I am given a tangible reminder of why I decided to live way out in the sticks. Coffee on the front porch and a decent digital camera make it all worthwhile, even at 7:00 on a Saturday morning. Oregon's a great place to live.

I guess I should make those who know me from outside the office aware that I have accepted a new job where I work, since much of what I write here is related - albeit somewhat indirectly - to my job. That, and many readers of this blog tell me they keep an eye on this site because of my professional work and experience in that regard.

Note: Just a quick reminder that this blog represents my own personal thoughts, positions and beliefs alone. Nothing I say here is in any way associated with my employer.

Up until last week, I was the Corporate IT Director at a terrific software company in the Portland Oregon area, managing the team of people that makes all the IT systems the company relies upon work. The team there does a lot of work: They handle all company desktops and laptops, software, help desk and end user support, phones, servers, enterprise apps, intranet and Internet web sites, corporate web and software app development, networks, lab environments, infrastructure, network security, and a bunch of other aspects of IT at the company. I have had the pleasure to work with a talented and great group of people in that department, and am proud of all the employees there and the work they have done and will continue to do. One real sign of success as a manager is when you get to the point where you have one or more employees who are ready, able and even hungry to take your job away from you. I was privileged to be in that position as a manager with my employees, and as a result I am confident the department will continue to grow and serve the company well.

So what now? I have made the move to a new position at the same company as Director of IT and Security Operations. That means I will be focusing on working with a team that does amazing security work at Corillian, while continuing to work with the IT department in a higher-level guidance and strategic planning role.

It's a natural and positive move for me (I have been heavily involved in many aspects of security operations and planning over the past few years) and an opportunity to continue to learn and grow in a red-hot and quickly-expanding area. It also means I can maintain somewhat of an IT-planning focus and continue to stay on top of new and unusual software and technology. It's a challenge that looks exciting to me, and for which I am quite motivated.

And it means a slight change of pace, which will be nice. I've worked at the same company for five years, and a little change here and there is a good and healthy thing.

It also means this blog will likely take on an even stronger security slant and emphasis, but I intend to continue to cover IT and technology in general. In fact, it's hard to divorce the two from each other and truly stay in touch with goings on.

And besides, when it comes down to it, I'm really just a technology and gadget geek.

Well, after what I can honestly say was one of the best weeks of my life, I am back home again, quite tired but feeling great.

I got to spend time with a good friend, and made a new one, too. I saw the dedication, hard work, fun and shenanigans of the young people that make the USS John C. Stennis work. If you ever have a chance to sail on a US Navy ship for a cruise, take the opportunity, no matter what. You'll be glad you did.

Being home again feels both great and terrible. I could have spent another few weeks, easily - Mostly because of the people I had the opportunity and privilege to meet and spend time with.

From this cruise I take home a number of important things:

• Spending only a day and a half in Hawaii is as close as you can get to committing a sin without paying for it by going to hell. So, I have to go back. The north shore is awesome.
• Good friends just happen.
• Getting old sucks.
• Being old is a state of mind.
• The modern aircraft carrier is an incredibly amazing system, and a terrific example of the integration of people, process and technology.
• People make the world go round, and it takes all kinds.
• If you spend a week sleeping on a big ship on the ocean, don't be surprised if you wake up on land to the feeling of swaying. Woah.
• The F-14 Tomcat is FREAKING LOUD. It's also being retired, which is a sad thing. And end of an era.

People are emailing, IM'ing and calling me asking for pictures and how it went. Coming soon - I'm pretty wiped and still need to unpack my crap. Plenty of pictures and stories to come. Probably 20 of you will be interested in my trip, and hundreds of others will wonder what happened to the random technology posts. Oh well, it's my blog, and heck, I'm still trying to figure out why anyone pays attention anyhow! ;)

I have to say, as someone who was just searched under a special screening procedure at the PDX airport, I'm glad the TSA is doing things the way it's doing them.

I'm a single passenger, with a one-way ticket to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, who changed his flight at the very last minute yesterday. So I got flagged.

Good.

I feel safer knowing that I was searched and singled out. Not because of who I am, but because of the situaion I created by choice.

After the special screening, not knowing why I had been singled out (and being the curious person that I am), I asked one of the TSA employees if the decision to search me was just random (at that point I assumed it was). She told me that no, it's not really random, and that's when I realized the profile/pattern I fit into.

And the Hawaiian Airlines gate person just called my name and inspected my paperwork to verify I had been properly screened.

I'm glad someone's paying attention.


--------------------
Greg Hughes

I'll be going on vacation this coming weekend for a week plus a couple additional days. I'll be able to post the details when I get back, but for now let's just say it's going to be a very, very different kind of vacation, and I am definitely looking forward to the experience. That 5GB Seagate CF-II hard drive that I ripped out of the Rio Carbon MP3 player is finally going to get its real workout in my digital camera.

It's about what you'd expect. A group of people from all over the country - well the world, actually - are converging on South Lake Tahoe for a couple days of Geek Fest. What do they want to do? Watch the presidential debates and have WiFi so they can blog about it while it happens. Heheh... Freakin' hard-core blodgers...

I might even join in on the debate action, except that I actually try to stay away from political positions on this site. I lean a little to the right (politically, now stop that), but mostly hang in the middle somewhere. I know who I like for this election (and am glad I feel that I have someone/thing to vote for, rather than having to vote against someone).

On a personal note, I had the opportunity to meet someone here whom I have always held in high regard, ever since we first conversed on the Internet back in 1996. [Sidenote: In our big-small world, it seems people tend to judge others without having actually met them. That has always bothered me, it's a mistake to do that. Forgive the analogy, but fact is you can't tell a book by its cover, and you can tell even less about a book from a picture of it's cover on Amazon. Believing its possible to know someone on the Internet the same way you would know them if you met them face-to-face is short-sighted and plain wrong.] So, while I have always suspected as much, I have now had the opportunity to confirm that Chris is a good and likeable guy, and a hard worker. And Ponzi is very cool, too. Oh and BTW Chris, it was PowWow by Tribal Voice - anyone remember that one??

There are others I am looking forward to meeting, as well - people with whom I have had professional or blogging contact frequently, but whose analog voices I have never heard and whose non-virtual hands I have never had the opportunity to shake. Thats the best part of this event for me - making the virtual relationships real.

By the way... The BlueGo Networks via Proto Networks WiFi hot-spots here suck. If I have to pay through the nose for WiFi, it sure as hell better work, and this service is worse than bad. Argh. It worked last night for the most part, and today it connects for 5 seconds and then drops out, then comes back for a minute or two, then drops. What a freakin' tease! Highly non-recommended.

The other day I mentioned about how I heard a rather popular blogger from Seattle on the radio, and essentially had a "wow what a 'big small world' this is" moment. The Internet has done that - effectively shrunk the world as we know it, while maintaining its true non-virtual size and mass.

Yesterday a co-worker, Steve, saw me in the elevator along with another co-worker, Scott. He said that he had just been communicating with someone he knows who lives in Alaska, and was talking about something interesting, when the friend asked him if the Corillian he works at is the same Corillian that employs the guy who tore apart his MP3 player for the hard drive inside. Steve was surprised and had a good story to tell. I bet that kind of thing almost never happened 40 years ago. Again, it's "big small world" we live in.

Today I'm leaving on a trip that will help turn the tables again and make my world just a little smaller again. Let's call it the "small big world" trip (it's subtle, take you time, heh). I'll be meeting people I've never had a chance to speak to face to face, and I am looking forward to it. There are people for whom I have great respect but have never met in person. I see this as a great opportunity.

If you think about how much technology (specifically electronics and the Internet and everything you can do with them) has changed the world in the past 10 years, it's pretty darn incredible. It makes me wonder what the next really big thing will be. I guess we'll just have to hang on and see.

Sean Gallagher writes at eWeek online. In his column, Root Access, he asks, "How connected is *too* connected?"

Do I have OCD? (Obsessive Connectivity Disorder) Do you?? My results are noted below, in-line... Damn Blackberries...

Gallagher: "I think that I've allowed myself to actually accumulate too much connectivity. As a remote employee of a highly-distributed organization, it's important for me to be as wired in as possible. But sometimes that may go a bit too far. As I sat in my car at a stop light responding to an instant message on my cell phone, I pondered exactly where I crossed the line into connectivity stupidity.

"Here's a simple test to determine if you have what I've come to call "obsessive connectivity disorder." The symptoms are listed in order from least to most severe; if you get more than halfway down the list, then you probably have OCD."

E-mail connectivity :

• You have more than one e-mail account that you check from work. YES
• You have more than one e-mail client running on your PC. YES
• You have more than one e-mail account that you check from a mobile device. YES
• You move information from one device to another by e-mailing it to yourself. YES
• You have read e-mail while at a sporting event. YES
• You have read e-mail while coaching a sporting event. NO
• You have read e-mail while participating in a sporting event. NO
• You have read an email while driving. YES
• You have responded to an e-mail while driving. YES
• You have responded to an email while home, in bed. YES :-(
• You have sent an e-mail from your phone to your Blackberry just to find it in your drawer. YES :-(

Instant messaging:

• You have more than one instant-messaging client running on your desktop PC. YES
• You have an instant messaging client running on your mobile phone. YES (in the past)
• You frequently see the AOL Instant Messenger alert, "Your screen name is now signed into AOL(R) Instant Messenger (TM) in 3 locations." And all of those locations are you. NO (AIM Sux0rz)
• You have more than two instant messaging clients running on your mobile device. And they're both active. NO
• You have instant-messaged yourself a reminder at your desktop from a mobile device. YES
• You IM your children to tell them to take out the trash. While you're at home. Uh - NO
• You have responded to an instant message while driving. On your cell phone. And it was more than just, "OK." YES

My first real job, and the profession for which I went to college, was photojournalism. One of my heros of the trade, Eddie Adams, died Sunday from Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS).

I've since moved on to other work, a decision I sometimes ponder when I am feeling especially creative without an outlet. But the extreme importance of the trade, which Eddie Adams personified, has stuck with me over the years.

Adams was probably most famous for his picture of a Viet Cong officer being shot in the head in the streets of Saigon, Vietnam in 1968. But his contributions to photojournalism and bringing the world closer to all of us went much further than that. He covered 13 wars, worked many years for the Associated Press and Time-Life, and photographed presidents and other heads of state during his extensive and colorful career.

In his own unique way he took the trade as seriously as anyone, realizing the power and responsibility of the lens and film. Writing about the famous picture from Saigon in '68 in Time Magazine, Adams said:

"The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?'"

If a picture was worth a thousand words, Eddie Adams' images are worth a million. He taught new photographers the trade, and passed his talents and values on to many.

I never met Eddie Adams personally, so I can't say I knew him, but I can say that he helped me to better know myself when I was learning the trade and craft of photojpournalism. Thank you, Eddie Adams, for always making me think, and for making life a little more real while you were here with us.

I'm on vacation, sitting at Powell's City of Books (9am-11pm every day of the year, which makes it 14/7/365 I guess?), in the coffee shop with my requisite dose of caffeine, using my wireless laptop to access the Internet for free. Here in Portland, we have this terrific thing called the Personal Telco Project, which self-describes itself as:

We are a volunteer group of Portlanders who believe that 802.11 (wireless networking, or "Wi-Fi") technology is both cool and empowering.  We started out by turning our own houses and apartments into wireless hot spots (also referred to as "nodes"), and then set about building these nodes in public locations such as parks and coffee shops.  Currently we have over 100 active nodes, and we eventually would like to cover the entire city of Portland, Oregon with even more.

So while my friend who is visiting from Germany (who happens to be a real book-freak - in the nicest sense of the word “freak” of course!) searches every aisle of books here in the largest independant bookstore in the world, I am able to take a load off my back, check email, avoid the VPN to work (:)) and send GMAIL invitations to the first six of umpteen people who correctly answered a trivia question and earned gmail invitations. To the rest of you, I have put you on my waiting list and will send your invites when I get them - thanks for playing!

Powell's Books, for those who have not experienced it, is an amazing place. New and used books by the hundreds of thousands line the shelvces of this full city block of bookstore. My favorite room in the whole place is on the top floor, just off of what they call the Pearl Room.

Behind a wood door and darker than the rest of the place is the Rare Book Room. This room is home to many first-of-the-first books (as in first edition, first printing). Old books sit on the shelves, and the most rare among them sit in the middle of each rack with a simple glass loked sliding door on each. If you ask, the attendant librarian will open the glass to show you a book that interests you.

These are not reading books though, unlesss you are filthy rich. My favorite book in the room (at least right now) is the original British first edition and printing of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein. It's not like I can afford to buy it, or even touch it: That book is for sale for $25,000. But it is fun to look at.

Should you be a Tolkein fan, and want to invest in something a little more in the “gold” range rather than “platinum,” there is a 1st/1st 3-book set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a little worn but in decent shape with dust jackets. This can be yours for $6,000. If you're more of an old-but-not-expensive person (read: early books but not necessarily original), a second-edition set in similar condition is available in sleeves for $600 - quite a difference in price.

I sit here looking at paper books and typing on an electronic keybord, sending my words to a digital storage where others can see them. While there is something exciting about the digital lifestyle, so is there something quite relaxing and seemingly more “real” about the book I can hold in my hand, the cover I can feel and the pages I can turn. The smell of old books is noticibly different from the smell of a laptop or computer monitor. It's earthy and feels more like it came from somewhere real, rather than from somewhere pretend. I like that, and I think in a way we all need that.

I'll gladly be taking the rest of the week off work, to spend some time with a friend visiting from Germany, Florian. He's the lead programmer on Admin Mod for Half Life, a server add-on for people who run Half Life and HL-Mod (anyone ever heard of CounterStrike?) game servers. I used to be the documentation and PR guy on the project back in the day, but a good guy names Dave has pretty much assumed the documentation role and does a great job with it, and PR is not exactly necessary anymore . So, I pretty much just hang out these days. We will be spending some time seeing the sites and cooking on the grill at least once, before heading up to Seattle to visit with Alfred, who originally wrote Admin Mod and now works at Valve Software, the company that created Half Life. He's been pretty busy lately. It will be the first time the three of us have met up in one place at the same time.

It's going to be a good week.

Here are some great ideas people have given for things to do while Florian is here. I think we will pick and choose a few items from this list and a couple other ideas that were passed along:

• The Gorge and Multnomah Falls, then
• Hop over the bridge while out that way and eat at Skamania Lodge.
• Drive him up the Clackamas River to Ripplebrook ranger station so he can see what the Cascade Range looks like.
• McMenamins
• Do an Oregon winery tour through Newberg, McMinnville etc.
• Take him up to Timberline Lodge so he can see Mt Hood and the lodge has great eating.
• The giant sturgeon at Bonneville Dam.
• Visit Tillamook and take a tour of the ice creamery.
• Drive south down I-5 and go to the coast at Florence (hwy 126) and drive up 101 to Newport. 101 goes along the ocean most of the way and the views are awesome.
• Then take him Salmon fishing on a day charter out of Newport.
• End of the Oregon Trail museum in Oregon City.
• Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville.
• Silver Falls State Park (east of Salem).
• With kids, AC Gilbert Museum in Salem and Enchanted Forest in Salem.
• Portland Chinese Garden
• Powell's Books
• Harvey's Comedy Club
• OMSI

UPDATE: The Genesis space capsule crashed in the desert after a parachute system intended to slow it's descent failed to deploy. The plan was for a helicopter crew to hook the parachute in mid-air in order to prevent the capsule from impacting the ground even under parachute speeds, but without the chute the capsule impacted at nearly 200 miles per hour.

I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is home to Los Alamos National Laboratory. Scientists there do incredible research about many, many things - including our sun and such important and fascinating things as the solar winds, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and solar flares. My stepfather pioneered the term CME and has dedicated years of work in the field. I have not had a chance to talk to him yet about what the loss of this experiment means to his colleagues, but I imagine it's a real heart-breaker. There is still some optimism that there will be usable solar matter collected from the mission, and my fingers are crossed.

At precisely 8:52:46 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), northwest of Bend, Oregon, a fireball will appear in the sky: a white-hot dot of light, brighter than the planet Venus, gliding across the blue morning sky.

No, it's not a scary movie, it's a space capsule returning to earth after being jettisoned by the Genesis spacecraft. Inside are samples of our sun's solar wind particles, which are being returned to earth for research.

If you live in Southern Oregon (from Bend to the southeast), Southern Idaho or Northern Nevada, look up in the sky at about 8:52 a.m. today - and take a video - I am curious what this will look like!

• Viewer's map here
• Story here

It's another long weekend at home, and after pretty much nothing but clouds and rain Saturday, the great weather today means an opportunity to get some stuff done outside. Among the around-the-house items I have been tending to this afternoon, I harvested a bunch of garden stuff:

• The first (of many, it appears) ripe tomato
• About 20 ears of corn
• About 20 carrots
• 10 beets
• 12 bell peppers
• Uncountable sweet peas
• A few strawberries

And there's plenty more of everything where that came from, with the exception of the corn - the plants were a little too close together, it appears, and most of the ears are too small. But the ones that did grow are awfully good.

If the weather holds out, there's going to be a tomato give-away happening pretty soon - there's just no way I can eat all of those.

Oh, and the big sunflowers are topping out at about 18 feet at the tallest, with stalks almost as thick as my forearm. Those are some amazing plants!

The forecast I received this morning on my trusty mobile device told me it would be 73 degrees and partly cloudy, and offered the same for the rest of the weekend.

So far it's been drizzling rain all day and completely clouded over. My garden needs some sun. The lawn is too wet to mow. I drove the motorcycle to the shop in the rain to get the brake recall thing done, and got wet. I turned on the heat for the first time in forever.

Trusty mobile device. Yeah, right.

If this is partly cloudy, what's next?

Don't know about you, but I've had enough for one week. Three days off. W00t!

Plans: taking the motorcycle in for a brake recall, visiting a friend's coffee shop, hanging out, mowing the yard, and we'll see what else.

What's everyone else up to?

My friend Dian wrote to say she is thrilled to let everyone know that the new Urban Grind Coffee, in the Pearl, is finally open!  They're done with construction and training and are fully operational. Head on down and check them out. Be sure to take your laptop - they're a Personal Telco site, so free WiFi is available!

Urban Grind Coffee is located at 911 NW 14th Ave. in the Pearl, on the corner of 14th and Kearny (Portland).  The building is just one block north of the new REI store in a very cool part of town. Their business hours are:

• Sunday 7am-7pm
• Monday/Tuesday 6am-7pm
• Wednesday-Friday 6am-9pm
• Saturday 7am-9pm

Right now they're focusing on espresso drinks and pastries, but should be adding more breakfast and lunch items in the coming weeks.  Desserts and wine/beer are a month or two away.

If you're in the area, stop in and check them out!

Today's my dad's birthday, and so before I start my regular routine of trying to call him and leaving voice-mails everywhere , I just wanted to put this out here where I know he'll see it:

Happy Birthday, Dad!

I took two days off from work at the end of this past week, so I am now in the middle of a four-day weekend. I've done pretty much nothing. I'm just taking a break from having to be anywhere or do anything, and chillin'. It's a nice change of pace.

I watched Office Space last weekend, and in its own special way it prepped me for the past couple of days. Probably three of the top five lines of all time are in that movie.

“Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be.”

I slept in a couple of times. Played with the dogs a bit more than usual. I even watched a little bit of the Olympics. Fencing is on now. I know someone who should be a real contender for that sport in the future. Met a friend for coffee. Sat on my butt. Drove to Astoria on a whim (actually just drove off on a whim and ended up there) with a friend and grabbed pizza before heading home.

So, I have no idea what I am going to do today. Basically nothing. Yeah, this is greaaaat...

Does blogging consume a measurable portion of your life? Well, then - what are you doing on November 6th?

"BloggerCon is an unusual conference. We don't have speakers, slide shows or panels. Repeat that please. No panels, no PowerPoints, no speakers. We do have discussions and sessions, and each session has a discussion leader."

Now, BloggerCon III really sounds interesting. And the site design is cool. I'll have to think seriously about attending this. It also sounds like a good excuse to visit the bay area and see my dad - he lives just a few minutes from Stanford, where it's being held. I'll have to give him a call and see what he's doing that weekend. It's also a good opportunity to use some of my vacation time that's accrued to the point of bursting at the seams. I've gotten to the point where I'm close to "topped out" on hours, so it's becoming clear that it's well past time to start using some of them up.

Other potential time-off plans for this fall and winter include:

• A week off work while hosting a friend who will be visiting from Germany.
• Another week off work on a Tiger Cruise, where I will be on-board a nuclear aircraft carrier underway from Hawaii to San Diego, with a friend who serves on the ship.
• An unknown amount of time off (probably a few days) getting my back operated on in one form or another, not yet determined.
• A day or two off to go jump out of an airplane with a friend.
• A few days off here and there to do house stuff.
• A week off over the holidays to travel to England for my cousin's wedding and a big extended family get-together.

So, it's going to be a busy rest of the year. But I'll have plenty to blog about!

I realized I've posted almost all tech stuff recently, so I figured its about time to write about something a little less technical: My garden.

With three and a half acres, I figured I should do something. Besides, with my job being what it is, getting unplugged (at least mentally if not literally) on a regular basis is a good thing. So I started a small garden this year, mostly above-ground beds in the back yard, and it's working out pretty well.

• I have sunflowers that are 15 feet tall (not an exaggeration) and still growing
• I have three tomato plants that have a combined total of well over a hundred green tomatoes growing on them right now.
• I have more beets and radishes than I know what to do with
• I had something like half a ton (well it seemed like it) of broccoli and cauliflower
• The corn is growing pretty well (I think I have them too close together though)
• Gonna be some huge freaking pumpkins pretty soon
• Even the watermelons look like they're going to work out
• Peas and carrots abound

And it wasn't really all that much work, once the beds were put together and ready (thanks in large part to help from my great neighbors). I just seeded, watered and kept on watering. I pulled a few weeds here and there, but surprisingly few. It's been pretty fun. I like being able to walk into the garden when I am a little hungry and eat right off the plant. I'm not an organic farmer or anything, but I have not needed to use pesticides or anything. I used Miracle Grow on the hose just once, right off the bat, and the rest was just plain water and a little composty stuff, but I think mostly it's the good soil and regular watering.

I grew up in the desert - making things grow there was a true art form. My dad was the artist - I can remember that garden in the back yard when I was a kid. He even got peaches to grow there. Here in Oregon you have to try to kill plants if you don't want them, and even that can be a chore. So I've got it easy.

What I am doing now is letting some of the early-season plants (like radishes and broccoli) go to seed, so I can see if maybe they'll work again from the seeds they produce. I know that some plants will and others won't, and that is I wanted to I could probably look them up, but I just want to see what happens - it will be an interesting test.

If only the grass was as easy to keep green as the garden is to grow. Although the other night the lawn, whether or not it's as green as I like, made a decent carpet to lie on while watching the meteor shower (which was amazing).

Oh, and if anyone needs any tomatoes in a few weeks, I think I'm going to a be a little overloaded. Just let me know. Oh, and if you happen to be in New Mexico and want to trade some frozen roasted chilis from there for some home grown tomatoes, just say the word. I'm told by friends that the best chilis in the world can be had over the phone, though, and I am going to call them soon:

Perea Farms (in New Mexico)
505-565-1897 - at the chili stand
505-261-5887 - their cell
505-450-2535 - the chili farm itself

They'll roast, peel, pack and ship them to you. If you're a green chili fan and you actually believe the stuff you buy in the stores here in the northwest is worth a damn, you're wrong. Give it up and call one of those numbers. You'll be glad you did.

So, it was working out to be a great day - I took the day off from work and all was going so well... Then at around 6:00 or so this evening, problems came up at work that were unexpected. I had to help out with some decisions, and decided someone needed to be spoken to face-to-face, so I drove in on my motorcycle.

It was a great ride - it was around 96 degrees this afternoon. I got in, spent about 3 or 4 hours there, worked things out to my satisfaction and headed home.

It was late - around 11:00 pm - so it was dark out. I got about 5 minutes from work (it's a 45-minute drive home on the motorcycle), and was following behind a car on a rural road. I saw headlights coming toward me as well, and the headlights appeared to cross into the lane of the car in front of me. The headlights disappeared, I saw the brake lights from the car ahead of me light up and then swerve hard and jerk around. The oncoming car continued to roll toward me. I slowed, moved to the left, and slowed some more. The oncoming car continued slowly down the wrong side of the road and eventually skidded to a stop on the shoulder, dragging the broken front end on the ground.

The car was pretty badly damaged - the driver side front end was collapsed, and a man was behind the wheel trying to get out. I pulled off the road and called 911 on my cell phone, and then ran down to the car that I had been following. A man and two little girls were getting out of that car and his airbag had deployed. I saw child seats in the back seat of the car. Thank God for those.

Back to the other car, telling the dispatcher what I saw, how many people, what she'd need to send. Like I was a cop all over again. I got back to the first driver, and he had managed to get out of the car and was trying over and over to dial a cell phone. He smelled the way people smell when they've been drinking, and looked pretty hammered. He asked me if I had called the police, and I said yes, and he looked at me and said, "Why did you do that?" I told him he had hit another car, and pointed. "Another car?" he asked. "Yeah," I said. "Over there." I pointed and he staggered. I asked him again if he was hurt and he said he wasn't. "Why'd you call the police?" he asked again.

Babies and drunks, let me tell ya. Babies and drunks. It's a miracle no one was killed, not to mention that no one was seriously hurt. And I'm glad I leave plenty of room between me and the car ahead of me, especially when I'm on the bike.

I've had two sets of epidural spinal injections to try to fix my back, and while I have had some relief, it's not solved the problem.

So, I went to the doctor the other day, and he decided its time to send me to the spinal surgeon. I guess there are a few procedure options - one of which involves heating up the intervertebral disc from the inside in order to cause it to shrink. The heated tissue scars and shrinks, so the protruding (herniated) part of the disc (which is pushing on the nerve roots where they attach to the spinal cord) recedes. The disc has a soft inner portion surrounded by a more fibrous shell, so to speak. A herniated disc is one where the fibrous shell gets torn and the center material bulges out. The bulging out part is what's pushing on the nerves. Oh, and it hurts (sometimes a lot).

Anyhow, the doctor that does this special heating/shrinking procedure (the more common procedure is a microdiscectomy, where they just go in with blades and cut out the bulging part) is in Salem, which is a good couple of hours from where I live. I guess there are a few docs in Portland that do something similar, but my doc wants me to go to this guy because its a newer procedure that heals faster and has shown good results (less scarring damage to the disc - it's more exact). So arranging visits and working with that doc will be a little complicated, and I don't even know for sure if I'll end up being a candidate for that particular method. But if it means pain relief, it's all good.

The craziest part of this problem is that most days I am uncomfortable - some pain but not unbearable. Other days (few and far between) I feel almost completely normal (I love those days). And on yet other days the pain is so unbearable it can't be described with words. Debilitating comes to mind, but that doesn't really paint the complete picture.

Anyone have any personal experience with any of these?

• Intradiscal Electrothermal Treatment
• Endoscopic laser foraminoplasty (ELF)
• Percutaneous discectomy (PAD)

Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, whose son Garrett committed suicide last year, presented a youth suicide prevention bill in the US Senate today. It passed this evening. The senator made a tearful speech on the floor that brought back some awfully painful memories for me. I have supported this bill since it was first written a few months ago.

I have a personal connection and interest in this bill. My son Brian took his own life four years ago. He was 15. While the months and years since then have been very hard for those of us left behind, our pain cannot be measured against what he must have been feeling. Depression is not an illness that people need die from. Suicide is a terrible and permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people. It is often detectable and preventable. This bill, should it become law - and it should become law - will fund prevention and risk detection programs that will save lives. Young lives. It's important.

Please give this your support. Please tell Senator Smith "thank you" for championing an important bill during a time in his life that I know is wrought with emotional pain.

To Senator Smith - Thank you very much for what you're doing. I'm right there with you.

• Youth Suicide Prevention Education Program - http://www.yspep.org/youth.html

Heading out to pick up a big truck with all the equipment for the fireworks show I'm responsible for firing tomorrow. A few people know that I'm a state-licensed pyrotechnician, and I occasionally shoot public displays around the region. Tomorrow we're in Clatskenie, Oregon (on Hwy 30 between Portland and Astoria) shooting several hundred 4- and 5-inch shells for their city 4th-of-July display. Should be fun! I might take come pictures or quick video and post later. If you happen to be in the area, stop by and enjoy the party the town is throwing. It sounds like a good time.

EDIT: A couple of pictures taken by Travis, showing the trench before and after the mortar tubes were installed:

• Fireworks1_large.jpg (186.45 KB)
• Fireworks5_large.jpg (437.66 KB)

I want to write something about my dad. Nothing flowery, nothing earth-shattering. Just that I love him, that I am proud to be his son, and that I hope he has a great Fathers Day.

He's been there when I was at my worst, and for that I am grateful.

So - Thank you, Dad. And by the way, I can't find your cell phone number again, and I tried you at home and work. Call me, why don't ya.

Fathers Day is a hard one for me. I am happy for my dad and my relationship with him, and also sad for other reasons on this day each year. But for both of the people on my mind this day, I am truly grateful for those relationships and the time I have been privileged to spend.

I'm also lucky to have good friends who think about me on days like this. They dropped off a card while I was out this evening. On the face it reads, "Those we hold most dear never truly leave us." I believe that.

Days like today are important. They give us pause, to thank those who have meant so much, and to remember those who have gone before us.

Happy Fathers Day.

My back has started to feel a lot better, off and on, over the past couple of days. I am not sure how long the relief will last, but I figure I will enjoy it while I can.

In that vain, I jumped on my motorcycle this evening (was a bit chilly!) and rode into town to return an Xbox game (RalliSport Challenge 2 - lots of fun). I've stayed off the motorcycle since my last spinal injections, to let my back heal and all that, but it actually feels pretty good to ride the bike and flex my lower back a bit. No long distances, and I will still take it easy, but it was a fun ride.

I think that beyond the physical stretching, the freedom one experiences on a motorcycle ride is something I need right now, as well. I've been feeling a little of that isolated-no-matter-where-I-am stuff, so it's good to finally be able to get back on there, even if just for a little while, and get out of my head.

Here's to hoping the weather warms up, and the back pain stays away.

Don't know why for sure, but I've been on this random kick recently about The Ultimate Answer and all that. Of course, we all know the answer, and how it was discovered:

 ultimate_answer_t deep_thought(void)
{
        sleep(years2secs(7500000));
return 42;
}

The real question is, what was the question?

And that's the hard part.

“I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.”

If it takes seven and a half million years of Deep Thought to answer the question, but we don't know the question, then what do we do next?

It's all quite mind-boggling. Certainly does not invoke a feeling of infinite majesty and calm.

Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work?

Is that the question??? What is the question?

"Exactly! So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."

ARGH!

In reality, I have been doing a bit of deep thought of my own, trying to decide what I am meant to do, what it is I am supposed to be doing with my life (assuming I am supposed to be doing anything). Through a series of trials, successes, tribulations and challenges - some random and some not - I've ended up in a place in life that I never would have predicted. I'm not complaining, mind you, just wondering what's in store, what's next, why, stuff like that. Seems like something's missing, and while I have guesses about what that “something” might be, it's hard to put my finger on it for certain.

Maybe I need to play a long game of Scrabble.

I can't imagine there are many people who care about my pain and suffering, but for the few that do and who have asked me to show pictures, here is a followup to my first spinal injection post from a few weeks ago.

And this time there's pictures! (Click on the image for more detail and pictures from the scene of the crime with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one to be used as evidence against... Oops, never mind. The red arrows point to the inserted needles.)

I went back in this morning and had a second round of injections done, only this time I skipped the IV pain killers and anesthesia/relaxation stuff. Last time they gave me this stuff that made me all calm, and a bit groggy. It's not that I wanted to avoid that medication this time, it's just that the nurse couldn't get an IV stick in me successfully. After a few painful attempts at finding a vain (I had not had enough liquids the day before and could not drink anything this morning before the procedure), we gave up and I decided I'd endure the pain of the procedure over the pain of he failed IV sticks.

That turned out to be a good idea.

My doctor's a funny guy. When he heard I was not getting the IV drugs, he paused for a second or two, said, “Well ohhhhhkayyyy then,” and started in. Yeah, it was more painful, but all in all not too bad.

The picture above is from the procedure, where they stick a needle down in my spinal column, about 3 inches, into in the epidural space where he injected a “nerve block” and some cortisone steroid stuff, which will reduce the inflammation and hopefully solve my problem of not being able to carry the weight of my body on my own two feet from time to time. Either that or figure out something else, but this is the first step (after trying medication and physical therapy - the first invasive step, you could call it).

For anyone who's avoided procedures to help with back injuries or degeneration (I have a herniated and degenerated disk), let me tell you this: You can get some relief (in some cases complete relief I am told). While my pain returned (I was told it probably would), and I have to go through this second round, the freedom from pain when you get it is worthwhile. I did not realize how much pain I was in until it was gone. Kind of like beating your head against a wall, as they say: It feels so much better when you stop.

Anyhow, totally non-tech, and so now we return you to your regularly scheduled blogram...

I recently got a new dog, a chocolate lab. He's typically puppy (read: sort of obnoxious but totally likable), and gets along great with my black lab, Buddy, who is about 11 years old.

When I last posted an entry about the new addition to the farm, I had yet to name him, but that's changed. I came up with a good name after much serious thought and consideration:

Diogi.

Every blog needs the obligatory picture of a cute puppy, and/or pet pictures. Here's mine.

He actually slept last night without crying or howling (unless I slept through it, that is). That's a miracle in and of itself.

Still have not settled on a name, but I am leaning toward Deeohgee.

Over a week ago my (new) cat escaped out of the house when a door blew open. She disappeared. For a couple of days, I could hear her off in the woods meowing and stuff, and a couple of times when I called she came sort of close, but never stuck around.

She's definitely a 'fraidy-cat.

Anyhow, after a week of not seeing or hearing the cat, I had to assume she was coyote dinner. I mean, she was pretty small and young, so death by dinner seemed the only option.

Wrong. Kat's still out there, still meowing.

And apparently eating well, from the looks of her. I have no idea what she's eating (mice and/or rats I hope), but it's keeping her healthy.

I tried to catch her and bring her in, but she jumped and ran when I tried. Hey, fine with me.

Anyhow, Kat Lives. Kind of reminds me of those Darth Vader Lives pins when I was in grade school (yeah, yeah, no old people jokes), only different.

New addition to the household that can't stand being away from people for more than ten seconds. Loud, funny, and - dare I use the word - cute. But hey, it's a puppy, so cute's ok. For now.

Buddy (my dog I've had for years) and he get along great. No, he does not have a name yet. Maybe I'll take suggestions at some point. Pics to be posted later.

Well, ok, I don't actually hate them... Heck I live in a town called “Deer Island,” so I guess I can't really hate them... But the one last year that jumped in front of me, the one I drove around just barely, the one where I was on a motorcycle, and it was dark, and the ditch I drove into in order to avoid the deer, well, it had a big fallen tree branch in it, and I never knew you could total a motocycle just from the cost of the broken plastic...

Yeah, well anyhow deer are ok with me unless they're in the middle of the freakin' road in the woods at night. Then they just suck.

But anyhow, none of this matters, especially since I got right back on that horse again this year (or more specifically I got back on all 203.5 of them).

My real point is, I laughed out loud while reading a pretty funny blog entry. And I thought I'd share the laughter. The link was gleaned from several other blogs I read. Enjoy.

Not like anyone actually wants or cares to hear about my pain, but not much else happening right now, and this is (after all) my blog.

So, this would be the one where I talk about my subsiding back pain and start to think about blogging with audio: You know, I was really excited about getting the audioblog.com stuff set up (and I still am excited), but I find myself getting a little self-conscious about posting my voice on my blog for some reason. Have been thinking about how to use this capability - have a few ideas, but will probably think of more....

For now let's call it a pound of “ouch” with an ounce of “anticipation-of-relief...”

This was a first time for me, seeing as how I've never had any kind of surgery or anything similar to what you might call a surgical procedure. This was minor, though: Today I had epidural injections of a corticosteroid and a nerve blocker put into my lower back. I've had pain for years now, constantly, that ranges from annoying at times to completely unbearable at others. Having done nothing up to this point to try to fix the problem other than taking anti-inflamatories, I decided at the doc's recommendation to try these shots and see what happens. If they don't work, he and I will see what's next. I just know I can't live comfortably with the pain any more, it's just become worse as time goes on.

So, anyhow, went to the hospital, they gave me some stuff that made me slightly loopy, and I was awake the whole time. Lots of needles in the back, stuff injected into the epidural space in my spine, kinda hurts, and now I am fluctuating between feeling pretty okay and having shooting pain, especially as the blocker wears off and the numbness subsides.

I am told by the doc that the pain may get somewhat worse before I start to feel better, and so far, he's right. But hey, this is I guy I am highly confident in as far as his medical abilities, and since this is what he said would likely happen, I guess I am not really surprised. I'll ride it out and see how it goes over the next day or two.

Anyhow, there are people out there who have been asking about this, and although it's completely non-tech, I thought I'd just post an update. I'm okay, the pain is there, expect it to get better.

Thanks to the kind hearts of a large number of coworkers, friends and family, I was able to turn $2065 over to the Muscular Dystrophy Association Thursday as “bail” money to get me out of “jail.”

The money that was donated will be used locally to fight muscular dystrophy, and to make opportunities available to local kids who otherwise would not have a chance to do many of the things their friends are able to do. My personal story (in the email included below) is just one example among many thousands of how small donations can add up to provide big opportunities for these kids. 

Four local children and youth will get to attend a special summer camp this year thanks to the donations. I can tell you, the MDA workers and volunteers down at the “jail” Thursday morning were ecstatic to have such a large amount donated by so many people, in such a short period of time. I was the first person today to successfully meet my “bail” goal and get out of jail. While there, I also received an invitation to attend the summer camp this year, and I think I may just have to take them up on the offer.

Again, thanks very much to all who contributed. If anyone was hoping to contribute but was unable to prior to my “arrest,” they can definitely still do so. Simply contact me by email, phone or in person, and I will be glad to make the arrangements. 

Thanks again for making a difference,

 - Greg

From: Greg Hughes
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 8:22 AM
Subject: Please help bail me out

Thursday, April 29, 2004
8:00 AM

In about one hour, I will be stolen from my place of work and carted off to jail. I have not been able to raise the full bail amount necessary to buy my freedom. Although many of my friends, family and coworkers have contributed to raise more than half the set bail, and every penny is appreciated greatly, it just doesn’t total up to the $1800 figure.

Perhaps there is something you can do to persuade more people that a small gift to MDA is a good and important thing to do. As an example, each $550 raised will send one child with Muscular Dystrophy to summer camp for a week, where they will have an opportunity to experience the kinds of things that other kids get to do. 

A personal story: When I was in college (and before I lost my hair), I worked at such a camp. I remember one boy from inner-city St. Louis who was unable to walk on his own and had some pretty severe muscular control problems. More than anything he wanted to go to camp and do what he had heard his friends rave about time and time again: To go into a deep, dark cave and spend an hour or two crawling through mud, seeing bats and cave formations, wading through cold ground water, and having an experience he could tell his friends about. I strapped him on my back (literally) and we went caving, with helmet and flashlights, just like all the other kids. You should have seen the look on his face. That’s the kind of experience these kids can have at these camps, and the meaning behind them (for the kids) is really something that can’t be fully measured.

At any rate, we’re not quite there yet, and I am truly hoping to be able to return to the real world today! Anything that anyone can do is appreciated. An email pledge for a specific dollar amount (sent to me and received on my blackberry while I am in jail starting at about 9am) would be great. And any amount helps make a kid’s life a little more special, and helps find a cure for MD. 

Yours in Prison,

 - Greg

Those who read regularly (all two of you) will remember that almost exactly one month ago, my neighbors gave me a cat as an early birthday present. Yeah, kind of a weird birthday present, given that it's a live animal and all, and it's kind of hard to re-gift a cat, but since it had less than 24 hours to live, I guess it was not a bad decision.

People have been asking me TONS of questions about the cat (many of them the same), so in the interest of full-disclosure and all that crap, here you go - Operation CAT Update:

• I have not been converted into Cat Person - I have never disliked cats per se, it's just that given a natural choice, I'm more of a dog person. However, I am finding that cats are kind of cool, even if they are conceited and annoying.
• I have not named the cat - Yeah, yeah, I know... Any number of people have already given me crap about not giving the cat a name. The only ones I've come up with so far are not ones that I would use in polite conversation, so to date no name. Besides, it's a freakin' cat; If I give it a name, it'll just look at me with disdain, swish its tail back and forth, and give me that “screw you and your damn names” look.
• I can live with the allergy - I'm a little allergic, but I can live with it, so far.
• I know she's a cat, but she thinks she's a dog - I have never seen a cat roll over on its back - over and over and over and over - like this one. Weirdo.
• Random access computing has a new meaning - I have several random browser bookmarks with names like “nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhg” because this darn animal won't stop walking on my keyboard when I'm not looking.

Overall, it's not a bad deal, and she's a nice cat, so I guess she can stay. We'll probably have to transition to being a semi-outdoor animal this summer, but we'll see.

Yes, I jumped out a perfectly good airplane.

Yes, it was a blast.

Yes, I will do it again.

Want to see? Click here. It was a bad hair day, but hey - what the heck. These day's they're all bad hair days. Not enough to go around anymore. 

If you ever happen to be in the Southern California area looking for a fun weekend, check out Jim Wallace's skydiving school in Perris. Jim, Gail Sims and crew are truly awesome. Jim has more than 17,000 jumps and more than 276 hours of free-fall time in his career - Number one in the entire world! He's the one in the yellow t-shirt in the video. And on top of that, he's a really great guy. Gail's also a world-record holder.

In fact, I had more fun this past weekend than I have had in a long time. Not only did I do the free-fall thing, I also had the opportunity to spend a few hours walking and climbing all over the USS John C. Stennis, a *huge* aircraft carrier, with my friend David, who is stationed on the ship. He's also the one I went skydiving with (we both had birthday's this weekend, and it seemed like both the best and craziest thing to do to mark the occasion). We spent four days pretty much just wandering around southern California with no real plan. Unplanned time - wow, what a concept, and quite a relief from the usual!

I also purchased a replacement for my digital camera that was stolen last year. I managed to find a Nikon D70 kit, which was quite a challenge because they have not shipped very many since its release a couple weeks ago, but we found one out in the middle of nowhere. It's a great camera, but more on that later. In fact, it was that camera-finding detour we took that routed us through the skydiving capital of the Western Hemisphere, or maybe even the whole world: Perris, California.

Our original plan had been to go to California Adventure up at Disney - that was going to be our fun for the weekend - you know, roller-coasters and stuff. While driving between the town where I bought the camera and Anaheim, David looked out the window and saw a bunch of parachutes. Now, understand that he works on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and pretty much anything that flies is cool to him. So, since we didn't actually have a real plan or any kind of schedule to follow, we decided to take the nearest exit and check it out. Within 30 minutes, we'd decided Disneyland/California Adventure was for wimps, and that we were going to jump out of an airplane instead.

So, that's what we did. Captured on video for all to see. It was great.

And then we went ahead and drove to California Adventure, anyhow. Heh. This new Disney park is pretty cool - the big roller-coaster there is damn fast and they have some good fast-action rides. They closed at 10, so we ran over to the Disneyland park and did the obligatory Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean rides (classics and still great).

I wished I could have spent another week in California, but my Mom's birthday was Tuesday and she turned 60 (happy birthday, Mom), so I flew there from Cali and got to spend a couple of days catching up with family.

It was a great weekend. Not sure I can match that one again, but I am sure I will try sometime. Pictures coming soon.

While heading for Disneyland, we changed our mind and stopped short. Found something that beats Disneyland hands-down. Got out at 12,000 feet, flew through the sky, pulled the cord at 5,000 feet, landed standing up. Fun way to spend your birthday when you're starting to feel your age, I highly recommend it!

Found an open network. Skipping Disneyland, gonna do something more exciting. Film at 11 - April 11th that is.

At the gas station in Tecumunga or some name like that. Filling up the tank, $2.45 a gallon. Wow.

I've decided to go have a little fun, so I'll be traveling on a birthday whirlwind trip for the next week. My birthday falls on this Sunday (also Easter), my friend who is in the Navy and happens to be in port in San Diego this weekend has a birthday on Monday, and my mom's birthday (60!!!) is on Tuesday. So, I'm off to California Thursday night to spend the weekend hanging out there, then over to New Mexico to spend my mom's birthday with her, take her out to dinner, get her something nice.

If I can bring myself to spring for it (dunno when I got so freakin' cheap on some things) I may pick up a new digital camera to replace the one that got stolen last year, and in that case maybe I will have some pictures to post from the trip. We'll see.

For those of you who work with me, you know how out of character this vacation thing is, so please - don't call me, I'll call you. And thanks to Mike and Debbie for watching the animules for me.

I'm going to be arrested on April 29th. A warrant is being issued, and I'm going to jail at Red Robin, and I need you to bail me out. Seriously, if I spend too much time there, I'll get fat and stuff, so help me here, friends!

Apparently they'll be coming to arrest me at work, and I'll be stuck in holding til people help me out and I can post bail. Of course, it's all a fundraiser to benefit MDA, so it's for a good cause.

Wanna help? Contact me. I don't think I particularly care to share a burger with some guy in a flower dress named Bruno. Save me - Please.

I'll post more when I have it.

I rented a tractor yesterday. They dropped it off here in The Middle of Nowhere(TM) at about 9 a.m. yesterday, and picked it up this morning. It cost me $200. Sure, that's a lot of money, but I've decided it's more than worth it. Here's why:

1. I can stand up straight and I slept last night - I have a bad back. The doc says I'm not a surgical candidate yet. Operative word there. No pun intended. Anyhow, I'm not ready to go under the knife, and I prefer to be able to stand, walk, lie down, etc. without the extreme pain I've endured from time to time because I pushed myself too hard. I'd rather give my money to the rental place, and avoid the wasted time, pain and insurance deductibles.
2. Got more than a few day's worth of manual yard and garden/other work done in one day - And I even made a trip to the store in the middle of the day, so in reality, it's was just a partial day of tractoring. Among the things it helped get done include moving 11 cubic yards of soil to several above-ground planting beds, excavating a flat space in a hillside for a new raised bed (otherwise a couple days worth of work by hand), repairing the quarter-mile gravel driveway (which runs up and down a couple of steep hills and tends to get ruts and bumps galore).
3. Helped the neighbors - Last year I rented a heavy-duty rear-tine tiller to break up the ground for a back-yard lawn. It didn't work - the ground here gets so hard (clay soil) that even an 11-horse tiller can't break the surface. Horsepower means nothing if you can't get through that top layer. I saw yesterday that my neighbor had rented the same tiller as I had last year (coulda sworn I had warned him when it didn't work for me), and was attempting the same task. Feeling his pain, I pulled the tractor up and offered to rip the ground to make it easier to till, and he gladly accepted. Box scraper implements with big nasty digging teeth are amazing, and the neighbor was able to move on to tilling other areas of his yard. 'Nuf said.
4. Tractors are Fun - Ask any guy who's used a full-size commercial tractor and they'll tell you, these are real men's toys. God Bless John Deere.

Back when I was a teenager I spent a couple summers helping out/working now and then on a horse farm that some friends owned. One of my favorite things about it was the tractor. It was cool then, and it's still cool today.

Yee Haw.

I must say, I was just a little surprised at how many people actually thought I was being serious earlier today... I mean - DOG SEAT BELTS??? Come on!

My story was borrowed from a pre-planned radio show on 1190-KEX here in Portland. The radio personalities notified some listeners a day ahead of time, to have them help to make it that much more believable. It worked.

The first person I heard from among many today was my friend, co-worker and neighbor, Mike. He seemed shocked that my dog, Buddy, was in jail.

My reply: “Can you *believe* that crap????”

He wasn't the only one.

Once the radio show started this afternoon, not only did the phone calls start rolling in to the KEX studio, but the local and state police offices started getting a lot of phone calls, too. The Portland Police Bureau was warned ahead of time, and it sounds like they were ready, but the Oregon State Patrol wasn't aware or prepared for a bunch of phone calls from angry and confused people wanting to know what the heck was going on with this “new law.”

Classic.

Anyhow, Happy April Something-or-Another.

Now I remember, pretty clearly, why I am not a cat person. Probably also why I (subconsciously) had not committed on my own to this animal.

No real sleep last night, claw marks in my hands (I was nice, they're just small and very sharp), cat pee in my carpet, meowing every five seconds since God knows when last night.

Argh.

At least I have the Internet to figure out how to make this cat happy (if that can even be done - I'm probably naive here, which is just another sign that I am not a cat person).

And before anyone from the we-know-who's-really-in-control camp throws snide remarks, I realize that the problem may actually be that I am not a cat's person. I'm fine with that.

I dunno. Nice little cat, and a very nice gesture, but I just dunno ... We'll see.

In this day and age, it's not unusual for people who live next door to each other to not have the first clue about who their neighbors are, what they're names are, or anything at all about those people over there that apparently get in their cars and go someplace each morning (probably to work).

It's not that way for me. My next-door neighbors are great people, friends of mine, and pretty fun (sometimes down-right amusing) to spend time with. They have great kids and good hearts. We hand out and do things together now and then. So, I consider myself very lucky, indeed.

Case in point: My birthday is coming up in a few weeks. They wanted to do something nice for me (which is really very cool). So, what did they decide to do?

Well - long story short - I now have a cat. To go with my dog.

Now, before you freak out and cry foul, please relaize a couple things: First of all, I was asked about the whole adopt-a-cat thing a couple days ago. I just hadn't actually committed to doing anything about it. But that's cool. Also, I have been talking about getting a cat for a while now. So this is not completely out of the blue. And the standing offer is that if it doesn't work out, the neighbors will take the cat into their family (and then they'd have more pets than kids, heheheh), so I do have an “out” there.

Hey, but it's an awfully nice cat. Sharp claws, yes - but nice. And she's fixed (apparently yesterday), so no worries about more of the same down the road. And perhaps most importantly, she's alive. Had she not been picked up from the pound by my neighbor yesterday, she'd have been put down by now. So, all in all, it's a good thing.

Truth be told, I've always been more of a dog person, but cats are okay. Besides, I live in the woods, so there's plenty of practical reasons to have a cat or two around the house (Note: one is enough for now )

In reality, it's a very nice - and thoughtful - birthday gift. Pretty darn cool.

I write this from my bed, only because I can't get out of it right now. Thank goodness for notebook PCs, better batteries and the advent of wireless networking. If it wasn't for these, I would have to watch TV, and that's not exactly a really exciting prospect on a Sunday morning, if you know what I mean.

Having finally made a run for it in 4WD-Low-range, I busted out of this snow hell with my neighbor, spinning tires and sliding out as I went. Fun. Worth it? ABSOLUTELY. You know, it's not that I mind being home all the time - that's actually not so bad. Rather, is the fact that I couldn't leave if I wanted to that bothered me the most.

Yeah, so - anyhow... We busted outa here late Friday evening. I promptly drove to the Honda dealership where another neighbor works and purchased the 4-wheeler ATV I have been planning to get for the past couple of months. I really should have acted earlier, but hey - oh well. The next time it snows like this (yeah, right), I'll be ready. And I won't get lost (or at least won't have an excuse to) since it has GPS on-board. Ohhhhh geek machines have hit the marketplace. W00t!!

Hmmm, seems I lost my train of thought. Ahhh, age - yes, that was it. Let's just say that if you already know you have an bad back, and you decide that - despite your physical condition - it would be really fun to load the new 4-wheeler up with snow shovels and stuff to clear the drive... Well, anyhow my lower back is keeping me in bed for now. If anyone has any muscle relaxants, let me know and I can fire up this nifty GPS on my really cool ATV and email you my latitude and longitude so your helicatoper pilot can find me out here in The Middle of Nowhere.^TM

And since someone's bound to ask (in email of course since no one I know seems to understand the concept of blog comments, LOL), it's the green one. Well, “olive“ really. Got Windows Media? Here's a video.

Argh.

I can't take it anymore! I'm making a run for it - cross your fingers!!!

EDIT: Dunno what I was thinking. 4WD and no traction - sliding everywhere. Must be crazy. Dog thinks so.

It's started. I can't see past the first row of trees. The snow is falling sideways. There is a drift behind my truck that's getting bigger each time I look. Good thing my internet connection works, for now. When the ice storm hits, all bets are off.

This is where I get to write about myself in the third person. Hey, let's talk about me like I'm not here, m'kay?

Greg Hughes is a technical professional working in the IT/Security field. He lives outside of Portland, Oregon in the United States. Greg grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He does not glow in the dark. Not anymore, at least.

37 years old and losing his hair, Greg's spent most of his life completely stressing himself out, but enjoying pretty much all of it. After working seven years in photojournalism, he shifted gears and became a police officer. After another seven years (itchy eh?) of being paid very little to take big risks and deal with mean people and bad-smelling drunks, he remembered his years of programming classes back in high school and made the bold move to become a professional geek. He now makes three times the money with one third the risk - not such a bad deal, he says.

But without risk comes a desire to walk out there on the edge, so now he blows things up as a hobby. Not bad, he says, when you get to have your fun and someone else pays thousands of dollars to buy the materials. "Win-Win," they call it.

Greg's day job as the director of IT and security for a high-tech company combines the geekiness of technology with the law-enforcement-edness of investigation, and his weblog (you're reading it) combines security and technology with the art of journalism in its own bloggy way. You could say it's the perfect way for him to culminate his interests and communicate them with so many others.

People who know him wonder how he has managed to pack so many experiences into his life. When it comes down to it, Greg is one of those guys who doesn't want to miss out on those things that most people dream of. Whether it's skydiving, climbing mountains, catching bad guys, or being the halftime highlight on Sports Center because some clumsy basketball player crushed him while he was shooting pictures on the court, there's a decent chance he's done it, because it's all about the experience.

Greg Hughes is a single, available, kind and fairly decent human being. He's convinced his future wife will magically show up on his front doorstep any day now. He has been a foster parent for 14 at-risk and special-needs kids, as well as a cop, photographer, geek, student, movie theater projectionist, paperboy, bakery cleaner, camera salesman, volunteer, and a whole slew of other random things.

Want/need to reach Greg? That's cool, yo. Here ya go:

• skype:  (callto://greghughespdx/)
• msn-im: greg@greghughes.net
• phone: (503) 419-6495
• email: greg@greghughes.net

If you want to keep track of whatever random stuff Greg writes on his weblog, here are a couple ways you can do just that:

• If you use MSN Messenger, sign up for .NET alerts, which can be delivered to your Messenger program and/or mobile device. Click this button to start:
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