melog-20101125.log

well, the dressing is done. wow, that stuff is good. i just took a small sample. we don't even need a turkey-- the dressing is a meal unto itself! it has turkey and broth cooked into it, with celery and other stuff. it's started off as my mother-in-law's recipe, but my wife has made it her own somehow by surpassing even her mother's ability to make dressing.

**** claymore spoiler alert ****

finally finished watching claymore. the ending was not quite what i expected. usually that's a positive thing. it was bitter sweet in that it was anticlimactic as far as the action goes, but the characters still walked away with what was most important.

oh well-- it started off excellent, and the leveled off. some moments were a bit redundant towards the end. overall, i enjoyed the series though.

well, time to get some sleep.

happy thanksgiving!

melog-20101124.log.0

whoa. i almost fell asleep.

all sorts of aromas are permeating the air. my wife is pressure cooking some seasoned broth that is chocked full of turkey wings, onions, and celery.

smells good.

that's the stock for my wife's dressing. she's also about to prepare the turkey for seasoning and baking.

she's also gonna make some mac n' cheese. not like that stuff i made the other night. nope. she gets tons of cheese and other seasonings. she buys the noodles in a bag, rather than the pre-boxed stuff like i make. somehow she adds in eggs, evaporated milk, butter and . . . oh man, it's just good stuff.

well, now she's wrestling around with the kids. she does that sometimes. just starts messing around with them. she'll lock 'em down to the bed or floor and tickle their feet. or pick them up and given a shake and lay them down to the floor. all in fun, now. none of this hurts them. they giggle and laugh and cry, "do it again, mama . . . again!"

even my rusty nine year old son. though, he's getting a bit big to play with like that. the logistics just don't work the same any more like with our five year old daughter. but, we try no to leave him out.

///////////////

i didn't think were were having dinner at our house until a few days ago. i thought were were going to my mother-in-laws. but, at the last minute, my wife tells me she's going to cook and we're not going over there. long story. but, my wife really doesn't get along with a particular sibling. she told her mom that if he's going to be there, she won't. period.

her mom asked her if she did anything to offend her. my wife told her that the problem as specific to her brother.

my wife says that her mother told her that she needed to talk to him about it. my wife replied that he was the one at fault, so he needed to come forward.

then, she ask my wife if she even prayed any more.

oh boy, what did she ask that for?

my wife replied that she doesn't pray any more. she said that god should understand already, so why should she have to get on her knees and tell him (or her) about it. god already knows.

my mother-in-law did not like hearing that, i can imagine. she replied that she will start praying even harder for us, now.

and so, i suspect in a few weeks, i'll end up in a conversation with my mother-in-law. she'll basically ask "why", and i'll be very tempted to evade. i've dodged this question once. it will be hard to keep doing it over time.

or maybe, i'll just point out how i agree that my wife has experience injustice and i stand by her choices. i'm not her boss and it's not my place to impose certain behaviors upon her.

i think i can say that without giving away the fact that i've become non-religious.

and maybe nothing will come of it. we'll see . . .

melog-20101124.log

woo-hoo! i don't work again until monday!

woo-hoo!

i always like to commemorate the day before thanksgiving as jade empire day. that's the day i discovered the game laying around at my mom's house in my brother's computer room. i really enjoyed that game.

my wife took my son out of town that year and i was at home alone. i didn't want to stay at home by myself. you know, an "idle mind . . . " and all that jazz. so, i spent the evening with my mom after work.

after everyone started to settle down for the evening at my mom's house, i started sifting through my brother's xbox games. he's known for buying a game and never even opening it or playing it.

ever.

so, i thought i'd give some of them a spin. i pop in a game, play for five minutes, and throw it to the side. i even rejected jade empire at first.

but, nothing else seemed all that engaging. so, i popped it back in once more, just to give it more of a chance.

before it knew it, my mom was peeping in on me at 06:30 the next morning.

you're still here?? i thought you went home. you've been up all night???

she should know me by now. why was she so surprised?

i ran across that game just when i was starting to open up in a lot of other ways. and i felt so much like the main character in the game-- following a path with many choices before me, but not really sure why i was even on that path, to begin with.

and just as the main character eventually re-evaluated everything once thought to be true, i found myself doing that with my life for real.

and, i also became acquainted with the wuxia genera and found that i love it!

anyhow, i always think about jade empire around this time of year. i loved the music, the imagery, the story line, and feeling like a kung fu master-- even though it's all under false pretenses.

but, there was nothing false about looking inward at myself and all that i though i knew about what i believed and was taught all my life. that was turned upside down, too. and i started a personal, intellectual adventure of my own.

have a happy thanksgiving!

and, have a happy jade empire day, too.

time to head for the house and spend some time with the family.

and watch claymore with my wife, too.

i gotta say-- can't beat having a wife that will watch shows with you like the sci-fi channel's battlestar galactica, classic star trek, and claymore.

melog-20101123.log.1

i had a sudoku puzzle that i had neglected for a while. i finally finished it and here's the out put:

You Win!

You completed the puzzle in 2 years, 10 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 15 minutes and 5 seconds (2 hours, 21 minutes and 19 seconds active)

You got 0 hints

two years to solve a sudoku puzzle, eh?

well, 2 hours was the active time. i suppose that's still slow by a lot of people's standards.

well, my wife is still out. i guess she's having a good time.

how come i don't get to stay out late?

melog-20101123.log.0

i used to listen to pandora online radio rather frequently. especially after i learned how to link my pandora account with my roku box and play songs over the tv.

once my family found out . . . all your stations r belong to us.

my perfectly calibrated, personalized radio stations became hijacked and started being seeded with songs that contain lyrics like, "if you're sexy and you know it, clap your hands".

man . . . i like hip hop, but c'mon.

that's the other problem with pandora . . . all songs are the explicit versions. and, the roku box is so easy to manipulate. keeping kids from hearing a lot of explicit music it difficult to do without simply banning the radio stations.

i just renamed my station, "hijacked radio: my kids hijacked my stations".

if there is anything personal in your life, be sure that your kids, spouse, and nephew will hijack it in time.

oh well, when you can't beat 'em-- bounce wit it, drop wit it, lean wit it . . .

melog-20101123.log

i feel exonerated! i was supposed to have a project finished by 11/15 and i still haven't figured it out yet. but, after people started looking at the problem with me, we've found that we had very poor installation documentation. crucial steps were omitted from the install documentation and i've received very little support from the vendor of the product i'm trying to install.

once some people smarted than me realized the problem was in the documentation, i stopped feeling so bad about not being on schedule with the install.

so then, it's not my fault. it's the documentation's fault.

and even after trying to add in the omitted instructions, the gurus above me can't figure it out. so, i'm not crazy! yeah!

working with linux, unix, databases, and unfamiliar, open source programs, you often run into a lot of terse, cryptic (i really mean: bad) documentation.

now that i have evidence that the documentation was the problem, a weight has lifted off my shoulders. i was so stressed earlier.

///////////////////

my dear wife is having some confidence issues today. i wish i could wave my had and they all disappear. but, it's not that simple. i hate to see her that way. she's so hard on herself and becomes rather depressed at times.

but, she's doing a workout right now in the living room. so . . . maybe that will lift her spirits.

//////////////////

i went to an indian restaurant today and met my wife and a family friend there. good eats!

funny . . . a co-worker of mine went to a training class in new york city last week. he said that the city has an area known as indian curry lane that has almost 100 indian restaurants in the area.

wow. we probably only have two indian restaurants in our whole state!

well, i know that at least one of the two restaurants in our state is really good.

after my wife finishes her work out, she going to meet a new lady friend that i introduced to her a few days ago. she seems nervous about it. that's so odd to me. i would never be nervous if i were meeting another dude. she's going to meet her for coffee or something while i keep the kids (again).

i guess i'll fix some more tyson chicken patties for the kids. i think i'll just have a can of chilly beans for myself or maybe some ramen noodles.

i suck at cooking.

melog-20101122.log.2

i was an amazon junkie until i heard that they defended the publishing of an e-book that seemed to instruct pedophiles on how to carry out their desires in a "proper" fashion.

it's one thing for amazon to say, "oh, we didn't know this book was here. shit! let's take it down!"

nope. they said something like, "we don't want to censor people just because their content is objectionable--even though we don't condone it."

okay, that's not really an exact quote of their statement, but that's the gist of it, to me.

so, i decided that i wouldn't buy anything else from amazon until they admitted that they made a mistake.

boycotts were threatened. they pulled the e-book. their stock dipped mildly and came back up with little problem over the next few days.

i really wish we had stuck it to 'em. i know we live in a world of free speech. it's just that free speech does have it's consequences. it's free speech because the government cannot imped the delivery of the message. it's not free speech in the sense that it's free of repercussions.

anyway . . . i usually do all my christmas shopping from amazon because i hate malls and shopping centers and all that.

anyway. i'm trying not to bow down. but, it almost seems pointless to protest any more.

i wrote the letter to my brother about the mystery check he received. i hate having to do things like that. it makes the disappointed of his situation fresh again. he's older than me and i always looked to him for wisdom. many times, he was even a father figure. somehow, he seems to have become a bit delusional lately. i'm not sure what has changed about him. maybe i just never saw it before. maybe people can have uncanny wisdom in certain areas of their lives, and have uncanny delusions in other areas of their lives.

at least he's in a low security facility. it's not like he's in oz or anything. i'd be worried to death if that were the case.

my wife called me from her cell. that means she's off work and heading home. she's probably going to have a lot to talk about concerning work today. or maybe not. anyway, when she gets home, i'll try to spend a little time with her.

but first, i gotta get the kids in bed. it's late, but they don't have school.