tales from the rock

communication is an art, and like a more traditional art like say, painting, when practiced by an amateur, it is painfully obvious.  take written communication.  I for one, clearly have no passion for it, hence, the large breaks between posts here - a place where I was supposed to be practicing how to communicate.  I still send 50 emails a day, but they often looks like this:

• “yep, sounds good.”
• “let me get back to you”
• “…..” (ignored email)

spoken communication is even trickier, because so much of it is made up of context, and subtleties that are expressed through other means.  intonation, rising and falling pitch, excitable gestures, etc.

 for example, the word “conflict” takes 2 basic forms.  the first is that of a noun, (a fight, battle, or war).  it’s easy to pick this usage out due to the accent and extension of the first syllable;  CONflict.

the other form is that of intransitive verb, (competitive or opposing action of incompatibles : antagonistic state or action (as of divergent ideas, interests, or persons) b: mental struggle resulting from incompatible or opposing needs, drives, wishes, or external or internal demands.)  again, fairly easy to pick out due to the accent on the second syllable;  conFLICT.

you would think this is straighforward enough for any reasonably skilled adult to handle - doesn’t take Tony Robbins to pull this one off in front of a crowd.

however

if you are the fucking hack bitch that insists on saying the fucking word the same way in either usage (conFLICT), especially when you mostly use it as a noun, then the fucking act of sound coming out of your god damn mouth inflicts pain on every other person in the room as we are forced to translate english from your mother tongue of dumbfuck because you keep saying things like, “the conFLICT between the vendor and us is mostly due to a previous conFLICT that involved another person, and that conFLICT is what is causing this new conFLICT….”

like a needle through the ear into my brain.

been a little while.  I’m so busy with work & life, I just choose to not write my thoughts down.  this actually runs counter to the GTD approach I’m trying to take to managing my life, so today I push some work aside, and insert this task.

I’m also trying to twitter - maybe even with jott.  I’m not sure I’ll continue though, since one of the main points of this was to practice writing, and the sms approach doesn’t really support that.  it may help with brevity, but in the long run, I don’t want to devolve into lolcat speak.

the problem though, is that with yet another open loop in my head, I’m starting to lose my mind.  add fatigue from not enough sleep, and some basic OCD tendencies, and some mornings I go absolutely batty.

for example, in the shower, I often forget where I’m at in the washing process.  often as in probably 2 times a week at least.  more than that if I’m in a especially hectic state, but rarely less.

my evening shower is pretty routine.  get wet, wash hair, wash face, wash body, rinse off, exit.  hard to fuck that up.  for some reason though, when I get to the ‘wash body’ step (or when I think I’m there), I start to second guess myself, and wonder if I already washed my face.  this would not have been a problem in the past, since I used 1 bar of soap for all skin, but for whatever reason, I now use face soap, so I can’t just go extra crazy with the dove.

anyway, so to help solve the mystery of the clean face, I have to investigate - I look for clues like soap on the wall, or just feel my face for ‘cleanness.’  when this starts to happen, I will often see no soap at all on the walls, so now I wonder if I even washed my hair.  I’m back to square 1!!  let me tell you, this is some maddening shit.

I’ve tried lots of things to help me out - moving soap dispensers out of the shower after I use them, etc., but that only helps if I’m lucid going in.  If I’m already tired, and start showering before moving the dispensers IN, then I have no idea if I’m coming or going.

the final slap in the face is the rewash - when you wash your hair or face a second time, it’s immediately obvious that you’ve already done it, usually through some combination of feel, or because he motion of my hands brings the memory back (doesn’t work with empty hands - tried it.)  I will also say that I’m almost sure I’ve ALWAYS rewashed - I’ve never actually skipped a step.  almost sure, because if I actually did forget, HOW THE FUCK WILL I KNOW!  it’s like deja vu in reverse.

this is the pain of my life.

wah wah wee wah!  he is finally broken.

I can’t believe I made it through.  while I started the week strong, it quickly faded into a blur due to a disaster at work (of which I was partially responsible), last minute organization for a big fund raising event this weekend, and a questionable punking by Tom.

work is usually busy, but not terribly difficult.  this bites me every once in a while because I end up under-engineering something that should have gotten more attention.  it’s a challenge to give everything the appropriate amount of time due to lack of sufficient staff, but I gotta pay better attention.  anyway, this problem was the result of something bad that happened months ago (and fixed right away), but since it was not discovered, lots of new work was done based on bad data gathered in the mean time - this is the worst kind of problem to have here, since there is really no simple fix.  no one is out to get me for this (yet), but it’s always embarrassing to have to sit in front of administrators and explain a problem like this.  while the technical details are very straightforward and reasonable, the layman’s explanation pretty much sounds like, ‘I didn’t do something right, so now it’s fucked up.’

the baby’s preschool fund raiser is this weekend - annual gala/auction.  goal is to raise $50k.  I’m on one of the main committees, so it’s a mad scramble to finish the prep on everything.  the thing that makes this more difficult than it should be, is that there is 1 lady who wants to have final say on everything, and as much as you want to change things for the better, you realize that unless you are signing up to run a committee for life, you have to let the 1 person who runs it every year have her way.  side note - debby deb helped me out getting her famous golfer cousin to autograph some stuff, but her grandma ended up making me look like a fool!  another blow to the ego.

finally, the ultimate bash in the head - Tom gets me with an April fools joke.  I feel this is a questionable punking due to the following:

1. the entry in his blog with the misinformation was read by me (a daily reader) on April 3rd, because he didn’t post it until later April 2nd, and then backdated to April 1st - does that even fucking count?!?
2. usually, his blog is so full of misinformation and confusing detail, that reading an entry and asking for clarification is a very common occurrence.  and finally,
3. the entry in question would certainly have been amazing if true, but not necessarily that unique (very young child walking/running), especially compared to the entry I read TODAY (dated 4/2):

“Well recently ive been compulsively saving my heel shavings in a gerber dish about yay big.. I was making some progress this year it was 1% filled.. almost.. of dead heel skin.. im using the new cheese grater tools for my heel..”

…

“Well my goal was to fill the container up .. i think it would take me almost ten years to do so.. but it would be totally awesome..”

…

“But.. in the end i failed.. that damn dog .. got a hold of my shavings one day.. while i was out.. and somehow ate it all up..”

while this entry contains the usual grammatical/spelling/diacritical errors, and the weird visual reference in writing (yay big), due to so much time spent with him, I don’t even think twice about the actual scenario!  Asking about a young walking child does not seem so outlandish anymore, does it?

ultimately, another week spent not living life enough.  I must work harder next week to improve my standing in this world!

time is flying by - with the holidays, the kid, and life in general, everything starts to blur together.  nothing like another reality check to make you stop and write a blog entry.

first, the highs - my blood pressure and cholesterol!  hahahaha.  not really funny, but unfortunately true.  I must have passed the magic age where youth heals all bruises over night, and processing a 12 pack of tacos is just something that happens.  the cholesterol thing really sucks, because I like to eat animals, and apparently that is not good if you want to avoid heart attacks.

to address this state, I’m trying to cut down on land animal meat - maybe once a day in small portions.  right now, this is actually having a negative effect because 1) I am constantly hungry, 2) rapid weight loss as I search for new sources of protein cause me to lose muscle mass, thus raising my body fat %, and 3) can’t take a decent shit!

that last one REALLY sucks.

other medical projects in the works;  abdominal tear (high hernia) repair scheduled for February,  and GI consult after that to confirm that my shits are diet/age related, and not due to some kind of ass cancer (again, not funny, as cancer is very common in my family, and my uncle and grandmother both have/had colon cancer).

my physicians hope is that I will be lucky enough at the GI consult to warrant an early colonoscopy, where they shove a camera through your ass.  I say through, because they don’t stop at simple penetration, and continue to violate you until they are actually near your throat.  fuck.

there are couple nice things.  the baby is doing well - almost 3.  school is treating her right, we just did a dress up day so we have a kimono shot for the 3 year blessing, and she had her first hula class.  very easy to have your life consumed by activities.  still need to work on balancing all this stuff better.

finally, the low.  out of the blue I get one of those calls - you know - one of those calls.  my neighbor who I grew up with was found in a coma, and they were going to unplug him because his organs were shutting down.  I JUST saw the guy, and now I got a phone call basically saying he was going to die within the hour.  what the fuck man.

now, while terribly tragic, no one is really over reacting.  the reason?  this day was coming for a long time.  this dude lost his way a long time ago, and was running the streets doing drugs and whatever else for the last 20 years at least.  still though, when he was home, you always wanted to be around him.  kind of a hawaii thing I guess - true extended ohana.  if he came home for christmas, all us kids could sit on the wall in front of the house, and it would be like we were young again.  in fact, he was home this last christmas, and I was jokingly calling him Jesus - the Christmas miracle.

as a parent, this is a reminder that you cannot afford to fuck up.  not that his mom did anything wrong, but like my friend who just got his daughter back from rehab says - you only get the first 18 years.  if they are off the track at that point, it ends tragically.  even at just 18 years old, his ability to correct his daughters path is doubtful.

once again, hug your kids folks.  and check for ass cancer if you can.

• friend with addict kid doing ok.  rehab costs WAY more than college.
• another friend just had a stroke!  don’t forget to live life
• work is fucking busy.  doesn’t help that I insisted on dumping losers, leaving only me
• very hard to hire developers in Hawaii, yet no one willing to pay for good people thus further depressing the market
• work life balance is terrible.  no time for blogging and other personal development tasks.  next year will be different!

so the big news is that the ridiculous babysitting arrangement the twin’s parents were trying to work out quickly crashed and burned, and now they are at Aunty’s daycare.  our baby is also on summer break, so it’s a family affair right now.

pre-baby, I’m pretty sure I looked down on early age daycare.  I felt that you should be available to take care of your kids.  of course, that’s when our living arrangement could support a single worker, which is not the case anymore.  also, you come to realize that as a first time parent, you have no expertise in anything. (more…)

so the baby finished her first week of school, and I gotta say - she loved every minute of it.

no separation anxiety, no crying when I left.  in fact, since she only had half days this first week, she was usually mad that she had to leave, and everyone else got to stay.

all the ordered activity starting right away every morning really wore her out though.  usually, she could just lay around until she was ready to get active, but the new schedule did take some time to get used to.  hopefully, next week she’ll be primed and ready for full days.

after 2 1/2 years of fooling around, she now will be functioning in an ordered society.  not a whole lot of time to mess about really.  I’m sure when I started school though, I was really into it.  I wonder how long that lasted….

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I have conquered the Rubik’s cube.  as part of my mind training exercises (along with sudoku, chess, and learning the 50 states), I decided to learn how to solve the Rubik’s cube.  rather than use a straight algorithmic approach, I learned a more methodical approach.  I did the same thing with learning the states - rather than learn a song or something, I really needed to hard wire the knowledge.  science tells me doing this kind of learning keeps my brain young.  I really think it gives me energy to do the things I already know.  I find myself more productive, and just livelier in general.

writing was supposed to be one of those things as well, but I haven’t been really good at keeping up.  I started reading the Joel Spolsky books, and while the guy states a lot of obvious things, sometimes the obvious needs to be pointed out.  interestingly, he covers a lot about writing in general, and the tough act of ‘getting started’.  bottom line - you just have to do it.

having conquered the cube, I now redirect a part of my newly generated energy towards my writing.  I’ll try and make sure at least some of it winds up here.

so much to write about, I don’t know where to start.  first of all, once again, I have fucked up my taxes.  for the past 5 years, I have been unable to successfully estimate my liability, and plan my deductions accordingly.  the pendulum is swinging like a bitch too - huge refunds one year, then thousands owed the next.  last year, I had to pay almost $10k, but I knew it was coming since in 2005, I was independantly employed, and wasn’t paying ANY taxes all year.  with things settling down last year, I thought I’d be close to normalcy.  I even hoped to shed the estimated tax payments I had been making.

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