Speaking of technology...

I'm so pumped about the revival of the computer, I have been thinking of ways I can take advantage of its resurrection. Primarily, it will be used to demo software that I create. And it will be an excellent way to prove to prospective clients that my software will run on virtually any vintage PC - even really old ones with a slow processor!

On the other hand, I'll need to be careful about how much "junk" I load it with, since I just discovered that the hard drive in this puppy is smaller than the one on my tiny MP3 player!

Power to the people

The battery arrived in today's mail, and first impressions are definitely positive. The self-test button on the battery showed an initial 50% charge - which was verified when the battery was placed in the laptop and the power management software indicated a 49% charge. Just a short while later, the battery is showing a full charge and for the first time in years, the laptop is capable of running without a power cord.

It may sound like nothing much, but the decision to order the battery was difficult to make. First, the original battery was so dead, it wouldn't even respond to the self-test button, despite having been "recharged" for more than 24 hours, and despite showing an 89% charge on the power management software status screen. Second, I had no way to know if the internal battery charging circuit in the computer was still working, given what I was seeing with the original battery. Last, and certainly not least, was the fact that the computer was so old to begin with. There was some question whether there was any point making it functional again as a portable unit.

Now that the computer is running successfully under battery power, proving that the battery and the internal charger are fully operational, I feel much better about the decision, and will be using the computer much more than I had been.

I've (almost) got the power

I took a chance today, and I'll let you know later whether it will pay off. A few years ago, I worked as a consultant for a large IT services firm. They provided me with a laptop, and when I left their employment, I assumed they would want their equipment back. Despite my sending several emails offering to return it, they never followed up, so I eventually wound up keeping it.

The machine is probably seven or eight years old, so it's not exactly up to date, but it is portable, and better than nothing. However, a few years ago, the battery wore out and it has only worked properly when powered by the AC power source. I've considered buying a new battery for quite some time, but today, I took the plunge and plunked my money down on a no-name replacement battery I found on eBay.

It's the first time I've purchased anything from eBay, so I hope I don't get scammed. The seller had an excellent profile, and from the feedback, I could see that he has sold this item before to many people. At less than one third of the price from the manufacturer, I just couldn't say no. If it turns out to not work, I'll send it back for a replacement. If it works for only a short time, well then, I guess I'll have learned something. But for now, I am optimistic that my experience will be positive.

I'll keep you posted.

Movin' on up

This weblog, for me, is like an online diary. I had never kept a "diary" in the traditional sense prior to starting this. In the early days, I thought it was important how many people visited the site on a daily basis, and I was obsessive about trying to find ways to get more people to stop here. One day, a few years back, someone with a real presence in the world of blogging had honoured my tiny corner of the universe with the "Site of the Day" designation, and my numbers soared artifically high for a short while. But, on the average, fewer than a dozen or so people actually stop here on a regular basis and I no longer feel the need to entertain anyone.

So, what's the point of this post - following on the heels of only a very few in the past weeks...

One of the original "bloggers" - certainly the one whose site I've admired most over the years - has called it quits. Not because of anything sinister (like the blog wars of several years ago, where some good people were scared away due to insensitivity from others), but simply because she's run out of things to say. Her long-held desire to become an author has finally gained enough strength to force her to take action, and her weblog - which has taken so much time and energy to maintain - will be the project that is directly affected by her change in priorities.

"A Small Victory", as her site was known, was always a place where I could go to read well-crafted stories and passionate political commentary. In recent months, the political commentary began to disappear, and so did my interest in her site. In an attempt to become less controversial, she had lost the spark that had kept me coming back. I kept hoping she would change her mind and get back into the fray. But it was not to be, and this week, she pulled the plug.

I'll miss her, but I know she'll be happy in her new endeavours, and that's really what life is all about. So, goodbye, Michelle. It was a blast while it lasted.

Not much happening

Nothing much has changed... I'm still unemployed, still working hard to improve my stress issues, and still plugging away at my project. I've been updating my website fairly regularly, and plan to make some changes during the off-season. Here's hoping I make some money when the new season starts.

Thanksgiving weekend

I'm so thankful that I had the opportunity to see all my children this past weekend. They're not always able to come back home for the holidays, due to the demands of their various jobs. But this weekend, I got lucky and had the opportunity to spend time with them all. I'm so proud of how well they are maturing - and having the opportunity to celebrate my son's birthday was a real treat.

As they grew up and went their own ways, their mother had doubts at times about how well she had raised them. To see them now, she can be proud of the wonderful job she did. I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful family - where everyone is healthy, and for the most part, satisified with their direction in life. What more could a man wish for!

I've been VOIP'd

Our local cable company recently started offering telephone service using the same cable as the internet uses. I had been considering getting VOIP service from VONAGE or Packet8. There were always reasons for holding back. With the local cable company now offering the service, all my concerns were put to rest. We'll now be paying about $45 for telephone service (including unlimited long distance and the five most-used calling features). That's down from the $60+ we had been paying, and WAY DOWN from the $90+ when I was regularly calling my out of town employer. Now, even if I get a new telecommuting job, those calls will be free!

It's been installed less than an hour, and I'm already in love with the caller ID feature and clear voice signal.

Edited to add

So, I'm on the phone talking with my daughter (it's the third call since getting the service) when the internet goes down. The phone goes dead right in my ear. Just a bit disconcerting. Hopefully, this is not some kind of omen.

Looking for good news?

Sorry I haven't been posting often. There hasn't been much "good" news to talk about, and I'm acutely aware that very few people get any pleasure reading the daily whinings of someone down on their luck.

So, today, I offer a bit of good news. My kids are coming from out of town to join us for the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It will be great to see them for the first time since before Labour Day.

In other news, my baseball project is showing promising results. After extensive testing and validation, I decided there wasn't enough time left in the current season to launch a commercial service. I will continue working on automation processes during the off-season and hope to be able to go live early next season.

Somebody's having a birthday!

This Sunday, my wife will be celebrating a birthday. I'm looking forward to the day, because it will give me something very positive to focus on. She does so much on a daily basis to buoy my spirits and I don't tell her enough how special she is. So, have a wonderful birthday, honey!

Fuck stress!

I'm under a lot of stress. I've been angry alot lately (lately being a relative term), and it's taking its toll. Being without work sucks big time. Not only do I lose my stream of income, but being a traditional male, the feeling is somewhat emasculating. There have been very few positions advertised in my field, and to make things worse, I'm seeing administrative job postings (with educational requirements of a highschool diploma) that are paying more than some IT positions.

Friday, I reached the breaking point, quite literally. I was sitting at my desk, working on something or other, when I forgot everything. I remembered my name and my wife's name, but that's about it. Kids names were gone, as were the names of our beloved dogs. I couldn't remember any telephone numbers - couldn't even remember where my wife puts the phone book. The episode lasted less than ten minutes, and recovery came slowly. I drove myself to emergency, and was surprised that the hospital staff considered my condition serious enough to see me within an hour of my arrival (waits of more than 3-5 hours are common in Canadian emergency rooms).

Long story short ... I was told I probably suffered a mini-stroke, and I've been given an appointment to see a neurologist this coming week.

Well, that's my life. How is everyone else doing?

What have we got here?

Exciting times

The other day, I mentioned how elated I was that my new venture was coming up #1 in Yahoo Search... Well, over the weekend, the same search came up #1 on Google as well (still #1 on Yahoo). A further search on more obscure search sites shows me on their radar as well, though nowhere near the top spot. This bodes well for future success. So, I'll keep plugging away.

Also today, I celebrated the (hebrew calendar) anniversary of my father's burial. Thankfully, enough men from the general community showed up at morning prayers to allow me to pay proper homeage to my dad's memory. Afterward, a small contingent visited the cemetery for further memorial services. Dad would have been proud.

Which six

When you're a senior, moving out of your home of 43 years to go to a new place is traumatic. Besides the horrors of unpacking untold numbers of boxes, there's the new place itself, with a different layout and different keys than those to which you've become accustomed. The new building has a secure entrance, where guests enter your apartment number, causing the phone in the apartment to ring. When I buzzed the apartment today, she answered the phone, then, thinking I was phoning from home, began to complain about all manner of things. After about a minute of talking non-stop, the security system cut off the call. I buzzed again.

"Why did you hang up on me?" came her immediate response to the ringing phone. When I explained that I was calling from the lobby, and asked to be let in, she couldn't remember how to do it.

I reminded her she needed to press the number "6" on her keypad. I waited perhaps 10 seconds, and when the door still didn't open, I asked her again to press the 6. Her response?.... [see title of post]

Woohoo

What a day! My mom's move is complete. I didn't kill her. And I got my first customer for my new service, less than a week after creating a website. I asked how they found me (I can't find the site using Google search). They told me my site came up as the #1 MATCH ON PAGE 1 of results using Yahoo Search!

I'll have more to say on that matter later, but first, I need to find me some "professional" graphics for the website and link exchanges. Anybody want to work on their portfolio by offering very inexpensive (a.k.a. "barter") artwork to enhance the site?

Coming soon to a screen near you

Over three years in the making, and soon to be released to the public. Read about it here.

Remembering

one year ago today

Ticked off

I've been reading ongoing news coverage of the London terrorist bombings. It ticks me off to see articles where the journalist says in effect: "these guys are really amateur. If they wanted to inflict the most damage, they should have exploded their device in the open, where shrapnel would affect the most people - not in the confined space of a subway car, where only a relatively few people absorb the entire effects of the blast".

So what comes next... probably a similarly inexperienced bomber will improve on the death toll by following the reporter's advice. Gee, thanks alot!

Shocked and dismayed

I often wonder whether I have false memories of my youth. There are events I remember vividly despite being assured they never happened. Some of these I know with my brain cannot be true - like being able to float across my living room from one couch to another without touching the floor... even if I had used one couch as a trampoline, I doubt it would have been possible to accomplish this feat. Yet even today, I have vivid memories of doing it. There have been other examples of this through the years. Today, I was confronted by disturbing evidence related to one such incident.

Forty years ago last June, I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah. It was a lavish affair, with a guest list that included more of my parents' friends and business associates than people I knew personally. Thankfully, my parents had hired photographers and a camera crew to take photographs and 8mm silent-movie footage of the event. Some years later, the 8mm film was transfered to VHS tape, with a dubbing of my Haftorah as background. That film contained staged sequences where I pretended to be drunk, losing the envelopes containing the monetary gifts - and then my younger sister appeared on the scene to scoop up the dropped envelopes, disappearing into the sunset as she counted her ill-gotten gains.

From that moment on, I have no recollection of ever seeing those envelopes again. I remember discussing it with my dad - and clearly remember being chastised for misplacing those envelopes. I never saw a penny of my Bar Mitzvah gelt.

Fast forward to this afternoon. My father died almost a year ago, and my mother is in the midst of preparing to move from her home. She's trying to get rid of as much stuff as she can, and today, she dropped off a box of Bar Mitzvah trinkets. Unused place cards, napkins, matchbooks, invitations, and reply cards had been lovingly preserved by my father, and were presented to me to do as I wish. And then I saw the envelopes. Those missing envelopes from forty years ago. Each one bore the name of the donor, and the amount of the enclosed gift - the notations made in my father's distinctive handwriting. There were also telegrams from those that could not attend, as well as the bills from the caterers, and the hand-written to-the-penny accounting of expenses that my father was famous for.

It is now painfully obvious to me that the envelopes were never actually lost. But I now have to wonder whether I received the money and just forgot (would you, as a thirteen year old forget receiving what amounted to 10-year's worth of allowance in a single day?) or whether my father chose to keep this money from me so that I wouldn't just fritter it away.

I guess I'll never know for sure.

Mourning is over

July 3rd would normally be celebrated as my parents' anniversary. Instead, by sheer coincidence of the Jewish calendar, today marks the end of the official mourning period for my father. By the Jewish calendar, the anniversary of his death will come on Tamuz 25 - which is one month from today. The official mourning period for a father/mother is one-month shy of a full year. Normally, that entails eleven months, but because of the Jewish leap year (which adds an entire month to the calendar), I've actually been mourning for twelve months on the Jewish calendar.

As a commemoration, I will be visiting the grave site this morning. Though the official mourning period ends today, my father will not soon be forgotten.

I've been really busy

Some may have noticed I'm not posting much lately. It's because I've been very busy finalizing my pet project, and have started negotiating with web-hosting and site design firms to get me online as soon as I give the final go-ahead for my new product. A number of factors have been conspiring lately to slow me down, not the least of which was a car accident that made sitting at my computer a very uncomfortable proposition. With my lower back pain more or less gone, I can once again put a full-day's work into this project without feeling like I need to get up and lie down for awhile. There have been other technical complications, but I have been steadily working through them one-by-one.

I'm finding that the data entry requirements associated with this project are far more time-consuming that I had imagined they would be. I am now working on some sort of mechanism that will allow potential "customers" to earn credits by helping with data entry.