DalphiNation

Long ago, everybody lived in the desert, and it was hot and sandy and windy, and everybody was miserable. They would push each other and hit each other and steal each other’s food. Then, one year, a baby named Jesus was born on Christmas, and Santa showed up on his birthday and gave him gifts. Little Jesus grew up happy because Santa gave him gifts on his birthday every year, but everybody else was miserable because none of them were born on Christmas.

When Jesus got older, he was walking around and saw people pushing and hitting and stealing and said, “Hey, that’s not cool. We should all be nice to each other.” But the people got mad at this, because some of them made money by being mean, so they said, “You better shut up, or we’re going to build a robot and have it stomp on you.”

Jesus heard this and said, “That’s not cool, man… threatening me. You should learn to get along and share with each other.” This made the mean people angrier and meaner, so they built a giant robot hyena and programmed it to smash Jesus.

And that’s just what it did. It stepped right on Jesus– SMASH– and ground him into the sand. And all the mean people laughed. HAHAHA! Because they were jerks. And then they said, “Hey, let’s see what Jesus looks like all flat!” so they had the robot hyena lift it’s paw…

but Jesus wasn’t there! He had gotten up and walked away! MAGIC! So the people went searching to see if they could find Jesus. Meanwhile, the wind and the sand got into the robot hyena’s joints and it fell into disrepair and collapsed in the desert, and everybody forgot about it.

Years later, these guys named Druids who lived in England decided they would celebrate the day Jesus got smashed by the robot hyena. So they painted up a bunch of eggs to look like Jesus, and put them in a big basket, and decided to smash them the following morning.

But England is all forest, there’s nothing else there, and in the forest lived these rabbits. One rabbit heard the Druids were going to smash the eggs, so it decided to play a trick on the druids, because nobody liked the Druids anyway. When the Druids went to bed, the rabbit took the basket of eggs and hid them ALL OVER ENGLAND. Because England is nothing but forest.

So the next morning, the Druids woke up, eager to smash their little Jesus eggs, but found the basket empty! And they were shocked and thought maybe the eggs got up and walked away, because Druids aren’t very smart. So they went searching for the eggs, and found them hidden all over the place. People in England are STILL finding some of those hidden Jesus eggs to this day.

Now, we celebrate Easter for two reasons, to celebrate the day Jesus got up and walked away from being smashed by a giant robot hyena, and the day that rabbit played a good old trick on those stupid Druids. So we paint up eggs, and rabbits, who live everywhere, come out and go into people’s houses at night, and if they find a basket of eggs, they hide them all over the house to let children find them, and sometimes they hide candy too, because rabbits love children almost as much as they hate Druids.

The End.

Last night, I showed Katie some online games at Fisher-Price.com and she was laughing hysterically at the noises and movements of a bunch of shapes and colors.  She seemed really happy just pressing space and then laughing as the shapes moved off the screen.  I think it was the sense of being in control that really gave her such a thrill.  She’s too used to watching things move on screens without having any control over them.

But what really struck me, as I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, was she began to sing the alphabet song, unassisted, and she completed it all on her own!  I’ve tried to sing it with her in the car, but she’s either not been interested in singing, or she’s waited for me to sing a letter before simply repeating it.  This was her saying the alphabet all by herself.  I was so excited, I just stood in the doorway and listened.

Preface: We moved into the house last May.  The owners had warned us that sometimes they’d find a bat in the attic, but that they had made attempts to keep them out.  We have always had this automatic cat litter box for our two cats.  It detects when an animal has been inside it, and after a certain amount of time, it scoops the litter and dumps any clumps into a plastic bin at the end.  We have had it for years now, and there has rarely been a problem with it or with any sort of odor.  In fact, in our last home, the litter box was right out in the open, and we only ever detected a smell when it was reaching time for the weekly cleaning.

That said, we moved the litter box into the attic of our new home, only to discover that an unpleasant “litter box”-like aroma began to waft downstairs, and no matter whether I had just cleaned the box or not, it remained, polluting our front entrance and living room.  We could not figure out why this smell would not go away.  In the end, Melissa hung up a curtain in the doorway to the attic to “catch” and “trap” the smell.  It has worked, for the most part.

Cue last night:

It was a dark and stormy night.  The rain was coming down so hard I had to set my windshield wipers to their fastest speed while driving home from work.  It was just Katie and me, as Melissa was in Boston attending the last of a set of classes she takes weekly to keep her teaching license.

I went into the kitchen to get something, only to discover that the floor was wet.  As I stood examining it, more water dripped down from the cupboard over the stove.  I grabbed some paper towels and began cleaning up the water on the stove and floor before opening the cabinet and finding a small leak running from the attic.  Great, I thought, the roof has a leak and there’s enough water upstairs to start dripping down here.  I felt nervous about going up into the attic if it was full of water.  Worse, Katie was interested in the leak and wanted to go with me.

Grabbing a flashlight, we went up to the attic together.  I made her stop and wait by the top of the stairs while I went into the large storage room where we have the litter box set up.  Beyond the cat toiletries lay a large, open area that we never used for anything because it was full of places where the boards had been pulled up and the insulation was exposed.  In some places, large rolls of insulation lay next to open pits full of insulation, as if someone had started to cover the place and then gave up halfway through.  There was an old, sealed-off chimney in the middle of the area, which happens to connect to the ventilation over our stove.  That’s where I was heading.

I reached the chimney and found the floor was wet, but not flooded.  Right under the chimney was one of those pits of insulation.  It had been covered with bendy, hazardous-looking sheets of plywood.  All this was wet.  Above it, the ceiling was dripping as rain water slowly found its way inside.  Shit, we’re going to need the landlords to do something about this, I thought to myself, passing my flashlight’s beam around the area.  I stopped midthought as the light from my flashlight fell on a small area of exposed insulation, and the small thing I say resting in it like an egg in a nest.

It was a cat turd.

“Oh, shit.” I said to myself, too distressed to note the literal nature of my comment.  I shifted my gaze slightly to the side.

There was another pile of cat poop resting in another nest of insulation.

With slow, creeping dread, I pointed my flashlight further into the very large area of exposed insulation that filled this half of the attic.  I imagine the look on my face was like that of a character in a horror movie as he/she slowly realizes that the room they thought was safe was actually full of face eating aliens.

There

was

poop

everywhere.

“Oh my god.” was all I could say as I slowly surveyed the giant, shit-covered pit of insulation.  They must have been shitting in here for months…

With swift, horror-filled logic, I realized the enormity of what I had uncovered.  Bats, or a bat, had gotten into the attic, as our landlords had warned.  They had left some little poops behind to mark their visit.  I saw small patches of smaller turds littering specific areas of the floor, validating this revelation.  The cats, smelling the poop, and stupid beyond all measure, rationalized to themselves that if there is already poop there, it must be okay for them to poop there too.  Soon, it became just common cat knowledge that if the floor was spongy and soft, it must be a spot for them to poop.  Thus, the entire exposed area of the attic became one enormous litter box for them.  And since we never went back there, we never discovered it before.  I was content to clean the automatic box and get the hell out of Dodge every week.

Thus ends my tale of the horror in the attic, or “so that’s what that smell was”.  Now, I get to spend my next weekend up in the attic, finding and picking up almost a year’s worth of cat shit, hidden in the insulation-covered flooring of our attic.  There are some areas where I will need some sort of reach-extending device in order to get the poop, as it is not safe for me to walk everywhere.  What we’ll do about the cats, I’m not sure.  I can’t clean this all up just to have them start shitting in the insulation again.  I’d LOVE for the landlords to come and finish putting the floor back down, but who knows when that’ll happen.  We may simply have to seal off the room from the cats and force them to use the automatic box in another location.  Whatever happens, hopefully this will cure that awful smell problem we’ve been having for months.

What to say?  This evening, I’m taking my friend Jon to see the movie Shutter Island.  It’s his birthday Saturday (he’ll be like 50 or something) but I won’t be available to celebrate with him then.  That’s because on Saturday, I’m driving up to Maine to visit Julie and the boys and do some tubing like we did last year.  We had such a blast running up the hill and tubing down in groups or individually.  Hopefully, we have as much fun this year as we did last.  I’d bring Katie, but Melissa is afraid she’ll fall out of her tube and get run over.  I guess we’ll have to wait at least one more year before she can join in the fun.

So my recruiter friend Leo called me up earlier in the week about a QA position he found that he thought I’d be perfect for.  Leo calls me regularly because he wants me to make more money, and hey, it never hurts to look, so I let him send in my resume.  The company took the bite and asked to set up a phone screening with me.  No problem!  Leo brushed me up beforehand on what sorts of things they were looking for… worked with UNIX/LINUX, automation, Apache Tomcat, etc.  Sure, I’ve used all those things.

So the interviewer calls me up today.  The position is very technical-based.  Much more technical than I’m doing now.  In fact, it’s so technical, that the interviewer notes that my jobs seem to have slowly weaved away from being technical and more about manual testing.  Is that intentional, he asks?  Well, no.  I’ve just been taking what I can get lately.  I mean, the job at Jack Morton I went for despite already being employed at UpToDate, but that’s because the marketing industry was more interesting to me, and I had the potential to become a manager in time.

Then, he asks the awkward questions.  ”Have you got experience with UNIX/LINUX?”  Yes, I used them all through college, though since then I’ve only used them off and on.

“Well how would you rate yourself, 1 to 10?”

Uh… what?  I hate this question with a burning passion.  If I were some UNIX guru who uses it on a daily basis and could cite the entire UNIX bible word for word to anyone, this would be an easy question.  Hell, if I thought UNIX was a bunch of  guys who got their balls cut off so they could sing Soprano, this would be an easy question.  But I’m a guy who has used the product off and on over the years for no major purpose, except 11 years ago, back in college.  I can change directories, modify attributes of files, delete, manage my way around the damn system, but how exactly does that rank on a scale of 1 to 10?  And fuck, I don’t want to pick LOW, or I’ll look like an idiot.  How many times have you known a person to rank themselves at something 1 to 10 and they go “oh, 3, definitely.” and then they get hired?  No, you want high, but obviously not TOO high.  So I picked a 7.  Then I thought that wasn’t enough and added “or 8.”

“What command do you use to see how much space is on a drive?”  Well, fuck me, I don’t know.  I haven’t got the entire UNIX command list memorized.  Is that what it means to be an 7 or an 8?  And what assurance does this guy have that I have ever even had to CHECK disk space (note: I haven’t)?  But you know what I CAN do?  I can access the internet and quickly look up the answer and tell you what it is, or use it if I need to.   Except I’m in my car.  So I guess.  Wrong.  (The correct answer is df, which I know now by LOOKING IT UP)

So now I’m displeased, because I feel unfairly judged on my abilities just because of that damned question.  But I take a moment to tell the guy, “you know, anything I don’t know, I can easily learn really fast.”  ”Uh huh.”

“So how much database experience do you have?”  So I tell him about the databases I work with here at work, then of the databases back at Jack Morton, the manipulation, the entry, the alterations, etc.

“How would you rate, 1 to 10?”

Oh fuck you.

“6, maybe 7.”

Shit, I’m doing it again.

“Explain a join to me.”

What?  Oh come on.  So I stutter through trying to explain combining two tables to this guy, but by now I just really want to hang up and go inside and eat my lunch.  No job is worth this.  This isn’t an interview, it’s a fucking interrogation.  I said I was moderately good at something, and now he’s trying to see if I was LYING about my abilities by picking a random function of the things I’ve worked with in the past and seeing if I know how to do them.  Yes, I’ve joined tables before.  But that was over a year ago, and I had to look it up then to figure out how to do it correctly too.  That’s my thing… I can do ANYTHING with computers, as long as I have access to the information on HOW to do it.  I have so much shit in my head that sometimes I have to look up the most basic snippets of javascript.  I don’t just sit there with it streaming out of my head like a ticker tape.

Fortunately, the “interview” ended soon after, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth that now I feel like I don’t know jack about things that I probably have a lot more knowledge of than the basic layman.  From now on, if someone asks me to rate my abilities at anything, I’ll just say, “5″ and not answer backup questions.

“You say you’re a 5 at tying your shoes?  Please explain the rabbit down the hole method of–”

“Fuck you.”

On Friday, we had Chinese food for dinner.  Katie loves chicken and rice, not that that is why we had it.  Of course, like every meal, she became distracted by other things halfway through, and proceeded to bring me the tape dispenser and ask for tape so she could make bandaids for her stuffed dog.  ”I’ll tell you what,” I said in my best negotiator voice, “if you take a big bite of chicken, I’ll give you some tape.”  So she ran over to her plate, chomped down a big mouthful of chicken, ran back to me, showed it to me (ugh), and again asked for tape.  I gave her a piece.

Fast forward an hour later.  Most of her dinner was still on the plate, she’d forgotten about the bandaged dog and was watching something on television.  She suddenly remembered the dog, examined it, petted it, and then came up to me with the tape dispenser and asked for more tape.  ”No,” I replied, “no more tape right now.  I don’t want you to waste.”

“YES.”  Katie said, looking me dead in the eye.  She pointed at her food, and said very sternly, “I’m going to take a big bite of chicken.”  Then she turned and pointed at me.  ”You’re going to give me another piece of tape.”  Then she stood there and just stared at me.

“Well, let’s see you do it.” I said.  So she went, took a big bite of chicken, showed it to me (ugh), and then crossed her arms.  I gave her another piece of tape.  I approve of her negotiating method, but I am concerned about when she gets to that point where negotiations are no longer an option, and she will just have to accept that “no means no.”

Seems like this blog looks different every time you visit it, doesn’t it?  Well, in case you didn’t figure it out already, there’s that bar along the bottom of this new theme, kinda looks like the Windows task bar, and you can click on it and view different pages or see a list of the most recent posts, or… REGISTER AN ACCOUNT HERE so that you can post comments and talk to me!  Wouldn’t that be lovely.  Yes, I’m sure you can talk to me on Facebook too, but I have more control here.  BWA.  HA.  HA.  Oh, and I added a photo page to the blog that connects with my Flickr account, so you can peruse and view photos from my Flickr account via this blog.  Yay.  Just don’t get the comments here confused with comments on the individual photo pages.  If you leave a comment on the photo page, I will most likely not know which photo you are commenting about.  Please go to the actual Flickr photo page for any photo you wish to comment on.

Perhaps I can devote a page to creative writing.  I think I’ll do that next.  Oh, the places I can go with my lovely little blog.  If anybody ever cared.  Besides my mommy.

Hmm, the Yahoo recommended keyword for this post is “blog”.  I see that they have toned down their recommendation widget.  Good job, Yahoo.  Yes, “blog” is perfect for this post.

Perhaps it’s time to justify paying for the domain name here.  I’ve always noticied an improvement in productivity when I have music to listen to, but never truly acted upon it.  I’ll sit at work and listen to my iPod and envision doing all sorts of things when I get home, and then I go home at the end of the day, plop down in front of my computer and goof off.  The next day, I go to work, listen to music and kick myself mentally for not doing anything the night before.

Yesterday, similar events occurred, except that I was party to an incident in the morning in which my daughter Katie threw the largest tantrum I have ever seen.  I was scared that there was something truly wrong with her.  It convinced me that I cannot just plop down in front of the computer at the end of the day.  I went home and hugged her tight, then played a game of “tag” (this involves running around the dining room table until she gets tired or slows down enough that I suddenly become the chaser instead of the chasee), sat with her and watched The Last Unicorn, and picked up her toys and cleaned the area around the television.  After that, she was too entranced with the movie to notice, so I went in the bedroom and cleaned up the area on my side of the bed that had become my “floordrobe” and was something of a disaster area of dirty and clean clothes all mixed together.

I found a box containing a set of adjustable cubby holes and set up a second set of shelves to hold clothes in, then went through my clothes and separated the dirty from the clean.  Katie became curious and came in and jumped on the bed and danced with me while I listened to my iPod.  She had a small tantrum when she was told it was bedtime, but less of one than this morning.  After she went to sleep, I finished setting up the cubbies, put my clothes away and swept the area where I get out of bed.  I can now walk around to the door without having to dodge bins and bags of clothes, though there are still some boxes with blankets and pillows and Melissa’s clothes in them.  After everything seemed acceptable, I sat down with Melissa and did some doodling while she worked on classwork.

I had actually hoped to clear the sun room, but Melissa is of the opinion that that will require both of us because of a ton of her stuff that I’d have no idea what to do with.  Tonight, when I get home, I think I’ll focus on cleaning the area around my desk.  I’ve got over a dozen random cables and DVD cases stacked, and the whole area is slowly becoming a danger zone.  I’d also like to organize the shelves in the living room where we store several of Katie’s puzzles and games.

Here’s to a new, more productive Wil Dalphin.

We travelled to Mountain View for the 4th, Melissa, Katie and I. Driving up after work in my new blue Ford Fusion, pausing in West Lebanon to dine on KFC-brand chicken, we reached our destination around 1 in the morning. My parents were up, awaiting our arrival. We were exhausted, and collapsed into bed, Katie struggling and crying in the provided crib until she too sank into a peaceful slumber, too tired to cry anymore.

We awoke the next morning to my sister and nephews arrival from their prospective cabin. They had arrived soon after we had, making the trip from Maine in much the same time. Katie immediately retook a liking to Duncan, acting shy at first until he went with her down to the beach and helped her throw sticks in the water. We had to nearly drag her away an hour later, she enjoyed being there so much.

My brother George and his wife Annie arrived late in the day, making the group complete. The weather was gray and off-again, on-again rainy. We spent more time indoors than out, but truthfully, I enjoyed the comeradery more than the scenery. When we could go outside, it was very buggy, and we expended great amounts of energy trying to wave off various insects that wanted to taste our blood and our flesh.

Several trips were made out to the store or my parents’ house in Whippleville for supplies. My father took George and I to rummage through his years’ worth of suits, shirts and pants, of which we each took a good number with gratitude. On one afternoon of light rain, I endeavored to take Katie to a nearby park to let her run around and expend days’ worth of pent-up energy. Duncan and my mother came along and provided support.

The 4th of July was rainy, but we tried to make the most of it by having a party with grilled meats, vegetarian chili, watermelon and a variety of chips and side dishes. Katie spent most of the time running from person to person, asking them each to read her the same story, Whose Baby Is That? I attempted to lighten the mood by altering the story to be Whose Booty Is That? my job as jester complete.

Sunday, each group packed up to head home. The weather was the finest it had been all week, and Melissa suggested we stay a bit longer, to let Katie enjoy it before she got jammed into a car for six hours. We passed a good deal of time on the dock, looking out at the water, throwing sticks in and watching them drift back, and then playing in a canoe on the hill down to the water. Hugs and kisses were finally given, along with parting graces, and we made our journey back home. Since then, Katie has pined for the beautiful lake, the fun-filled beach, her cousin Duncan and her dear grandma, both of whom gave her so much wonderful attention and love.

I got there in the chill and fog this morning, and two little old ladies and a middle-aged woman were waiting at the door with coffee. One with a walker had bought coffee for herself but decided she didn’t want it, so she knocked on the door to offer it to someone inside, and a grumbling, middle-aged man who looked and sounded like a young Brian Cox answered and told her they couldn’t come in until 7:00. She told him she just wanted to offer them her coffee, and he hesitated before thanking her and taking it– probably afraid it would look like bribery or something.

More people lined up behind us, and the little old lady with her walker started talking about how excited she was and how she hoped everybody voted Democrat. She asked me if I had to go to work, and I told her I did. She offered for me to go ahead of her, but I told her no thank you, as it was just a five minute walk to the train station, and not even that to fill out my ballot.

They let us into a cramped room where we were lined up to “check in”. They put me in the wrong line because they asked “name?” so I gave them my name, but what they had really wanted was the name of my street. After the confusion was worked out, I ended up behind the little old lady again, who noticed they were taking a long time to find her friend’s information, so she again offered me to go ahead of her, which this time I took her up on. I got my ballot, got into the voting “booth” (I was kind of expecting a curtain or something, but there were just these stalls), and proceeded to vote for Obama – Biden with the felt tip pen. I noticed that more than half of the other elections on the list didn’t even have anyone running against the person listed, and every one of those listed was a Democrat. Nice. I then voted “no” on Proposition 1 (to do away with Massachusetts taxes), “yes” on prop 2 (to lower the punishment for an ounce or less of marijuana), and “no” on 3 (to do away with dog racing). I went through the check out line, watched my ballot get sucked into the machine, and then walked to the train station to catch my train.

For some reason, as I walked the block and a half to the station, I couldn’t stop thinking of the little old lady with her walker and her coffee and her eagerness to vote for Obama, and I smiled the entire way.