Steve Jobs' impact on my life

I'm sure there will lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth today over Steve Jobs death.  I am very sad about it and I feel his loss personally.  A friend of mine suggested it is like Alfred Nobel, who continues to have an effect on lives long after his death, but very few people can claim he had an effect on them personally.  However, I actually do claim Steve Jobs affected me personally, and perhaps more importantly, professionally.  Please don't dismiss me as an iFanboy, this isn't that story.

I was in sixth grade at Belvedere Elementary school in Omaha, Nebraska.  Another teacher entered our classroom and asked for me.  Huh?  What had I done?  She took me out of class and led me down the hall to the "computer room" which was outfitted with a dozen or so Apple II computers.  She then asked me to show her students how to use them.  In a flash, I realized that not everyone got it the way I did.  From that moment on I knew I wanted to work with computers.

In Jr. High, there was again a room full of Apple II computers.  I tried to get as much time on them as I could.  The only class that was available was this wierd hybrid of Typing/Computer Education.  For 3 days each week we learned to type, but NOT on the elegant computers with their magical green screens, but on manual typewriters.  The other two days each week we got to use the computers, complete with writing programs in BASIC and carrying around my very own "password" protected 5.25" floppy disc.  Oh how I resented those days we wasted pounding away on manual typewriters.  Naturally, I joined the Computer Club, which was really just an excuse to play rudamentary games.

In high school the Computer Lab had a bunch of Apple IIs, a few Macs, and even an Apple IIgs.  The IIs were familiar, but started to feel dated, and the Macs were very cool, but too "simple" somehow, so I ignored them.  Besides, I only had eyes for the room full of IBM Model 30s hooked together on a Novell network.  Ah, this was powerful, shared drives and text messaging between workstations!  (Hey, give me a break, I only thought I knew everything.)

Now on to college.  As I mentioned above, I never had any doubt that I would study computers.  There was a time when I thought I might want to build them rather than program them, however my first electronics class cured me of that!  Programming was where it was at.  The first few classes I had were on familiar IBM PCs, but soon they let us loose on the mainframe, a VAX (not a big one, but still a HUGE computer compared to my previous experience).  With this came terminals with a graphical interface, which made it easy to write code in one window and execute it in another.  Revolutionary!

Now I realize I haven't mentioned Steve Jobs in the last few paragraphs, so if you are still with me, thank you, I'm getting back to him soon.  The school I attended, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, created an innovative program in 1990 called IFYCSEM in which first year students were taught an "Integrated Curriculum" where they had a computer at their desk in every classroom as a teaching aid, to work their problem sets, and even to take tests.  Here's where Steve Jobs comes back into the picture.  The computers all the Freshmen used were NeXT computers.  At this time, many universities had NeXT computers, some even had as many as 5!  Rose-Hulman had over 100!!  That meant they were plentiful enough to be usable by students besides those in IFYCSEM, namely, me.

To this point, I enjoyed working on the VAX, and had also been exposed to networked Sun 360s and was conversant in *nix OSes.  The Sun computers were nice, but I always felt XWindows was klunky.  When I sat down at the NeXT, with its sleek graphcs, integrated Workspace, a suite of development tools, and powerful BSD Unix core, I was hooked.  I had actually disdained the Mac to this point as not being for Power Users, because it was too hard to get under the hood.  It was great if you liked drawing pretty pictures or writing a newsletter, but beyond that I didn't see the point.  But, here was a computer with all the pizzaz of the Mac, and all the power I could want under the hood, easily accessed by launching a command prompt.  So, I dove under the hood, like a shadetree mechanic, learning whatever I could by poking around.

I learned enough to land a summer job at Rose-Hulman writing fluid flow simulation software for the Mechanical Engineering department.  The software was used the next school year to teach IFYCSEM Mechanical Engineering students!  This was my first real paying gig as a Software Engineer, and also my first software actually used for a purpose other than making a grade in a class.  Oh, that felt good!

That next school year was my senior year, and the Computer Science department required a Senior Project.  Naturally I wanted to do something on the NeXT.  My team decided to create a teaching tool for CS100, the intro class every freshman was required to take.  It would essentially be a computer language with a simple Pascal-like grammar and an IDE on the NeXT which focussed on debugging and understanding the state of all variables and the call stack, very visual.  We won an award for it: ACM Student Competition (scroll down to 1993, Undergraduate).  In the 1994-5 school year the "Prizm Toy Box" was used to teach some sessions of CS100, replacing Fortran (yes Fortran!).

In for a penny, in for a pound!  Having hitched my wagon to NeXT and the OS (NeXTSTEP) this far, my job search after college heavily leaned towards companies using this technology.  After all, I was good at it, and I truely enjoyed working in that environment as a developer.  Also, if you look at your history, the next best things at the time were DELPI and Visual Pascal!

Moving right along, I got a job with a consulting company that had caught the NeXT bug and started doing projects for them.  The big one was a transcription system for a Chicago hospital.  On another one we worked closely with the sales team at the NeXT office in Chicago.  I soaked it all up like a sponge.  After 3+ years at that job, I took a job in Chicago at NationsBanc-CRT as a GUI guy doing (...drumroll please...) NeXTSTEP development!  By this time NeXT had gotten out of the hardware business and was running on Intel-based PCs.  A good move in my opinion.

While I was there, Apple acquired NeXT, and things got really interesting.  OPENSTEP was just about to break out, and it became Rhapsody, which eventually became Mac OSX.  If NeXTSTEP was Awesome, then Mac OSX was Awesome^X (see what I did there?).  As I said before I wasn't really impressed with all the eye candy Mac OS had to offer until they put the power of NeXT under the hood.  The NeXT dev tools lived on as did their sesibilities about user interface design.  I had read NeXT's User Interface Guidelines book cover to cover -- and still find most of the suggestions relevant today.

So, where do I get off saying that Steve Jobs affected my life personally?  My whole first decade as a technologist was shaped by technologies he envisioned and ideas he advocated.  I never met the man, I didn't always agree with him (I liked my "scribbly" Palm Pilot), and I don't even know if I would have liked him as a person, but his life affected mine on many levels.

As for the iFanboy stuff, I own an iPod and a Macbook, but I also love my Droid X and my Galaxy Tablet.  Truth is, I love technology so while I repsect a lot of the stuff Steve Jobs did after Mac OSX, I'm not really a slave to it.  Last thing I just want to say it, better than anyone since W.C. Fields, Steve Jobs was a showman and knew how to give a killer demo!  Put him on stage and you were sure to sell products.  Of course, it didn't hurt that the products he was hawking were actually pretty good.

Movember - Week 1

Well, it has been one week since I changed my image. I am no longer startled when I look in the mirror, but I sometimes think I know the person looking back at me. For those of you who are still not clear on where your money goes, check out their Outcomes page.

Also, I have a MoSpace page on the Movember website, complete with up to date pics. For the click-impaired, here's my mustache in all its glory...NOT! Truth to tell, I'm a little disappointed. I feel like I could have done better by drinking chocolate milk! I'll do better next week. In the meantime, don't punish the Prostate Cancer Foundation for my weak showing. Please donate!

To donate you can either:

1. Click this link https://www.movember.com/us/donate/donate-details.php?action=sponsorlink&rego=1391346&country=us and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account, or
2. Write a check payable to the ‘Prostate Cancer Foundation', referencing my Registration Number 1391346 and mailing it to:

Prostate Cancer Foundation
Attn: Movember
1250 Fourth St
Santa Monica, CA, 90401

All donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Movember - before and after

As promised, here is an updated photo. I have to say I completely underestimated how weird this would be for me.

Friday afternoon, myself and my teammates all took over the public restroom on our floor of the office building we work in. One of our co-workers wanted to witness this historic event, but her gender was an issue. To be as accommodating as possible we left of the bathroom door open while we worked.

The most amusing part of the whole thing occurred when another tenant came to use the facilities. I didn't see the look on his face, but I can imagine his reaction when he saw three guys shaving, two more standing around taking pictures, and a (gasp!) woman in the bathroom. She offered to leave, but I believe we ruined the moment for him. Under similar circumstances I might have even had a case of bashful bladder myself!

Anyway, back to my own reactions to the event. As I said, it was a little bit strange for me. I felt decidedly unsettled, and every time I caught sight of myself in the mirror, I couldn't help thinking "who's that guy?!?" So, please help me cope with this traumatic event by donating to the cause...

To donate you can either:

1. Click this link https://www.movember.com/us/donate/donate-details.php?action=sponsorlink&rego=1391346&country=us and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account, or
2. Write a check payable to the ‘Prostate Cancer Foundation', referencing my Registration Number 1391346 and mailing it to:

Prostate Cancer Foundation
Attn: Movember
1250 Fourth St
Santa Monica, CA, 90401

All donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

For more pics, including a preview of what I might look like at the end of the month, check out the pics of the whole event: http://picasaweb.google.com/wconroy/Movember08#

Movember - no it isn't a type-o...

Raise your hand if you've ever walked for charity. I'm talking about a sponsored walk where you solicit pledges on a per-mile basis and then wake up really early on a Saturday morning and join hundreds of other people pounding the pavement in support of a good cause. I've always felt the act you perform in order to convince people to donate is arbitrary, whether it is walking, jumping ropes, baking, or ... growing a mustache, as long as you put yourself out there and support a worthy cause.

If you haven't heard of the month of Movember, I'm not surprised. I hadn't heard of it either until a coworker invited me to join his team. Movember is a replacement for the month of November, in which for one month, men grow a mustache (or "mo" in Australian slang) to raise money and awareness for men's health issues, specifically, the fight against prostate cancer. The catch is that you have to start with a clean slate!

For me that is a really big deal. For the last 15 years I've been a beard/mustache wearer. My face hasn't seen the light of day since the summer of 1993, shortly after I got my first job out, right out of college. My facial hair is an essential part of my identity. So much so that my wife has never seen me without facial hair!!! She once saw my high school graduation picture and said flatly "that's not my Dave." Last night took clippers to my beard and I have to admit I'm a little traumatized. I don't even know if I remember how to shave.

So here's the pitch. At 2:30PM today (Halloween, 31-Oct-2008), I and my Movember teammates are going to shave our faces clean. Then, we will grow our mo's until the end of the month. All through the month we will take pictures to chart our progress. Since this is mustache only, we are not allowed to grow anything below the chin, although I believe elaborate sideburns are allowed as long as they connect to your 'stache. Please donate to support me.

<--Before the shave...

Donations are tax deducible, I will submit your details and the Movember Foundation will issue you a receipt at the end of the month for donations over $250.00. You can use either credit card or PayPal online. If you prefer to pay offline, I can accept checks and cash and will submit your details to the Movember Foundation.


To Donate

Online:

https://www.movember.com/us/donate/donate-details.php?rego=1391346&country=us

Offline:

Write a check payable to the ‘Prostate Cancer Foundation', referencing my Registration Number 1391346 and mailing it to:

Prostate Cancer Foundation
Attn: Movember
1250 Fourth St
Santa Monica, CA, 90401

[Update: 3-Nov-2008] Here's the pics from before and after together.
[Update: 7-Nov-2008] Here's the pic after one week.

Going home again

You will all be relieved to know that I get to go home on Wednesday (tomorrow!!!). There is no one in the entire world who will be more relieved than Christie, however. If you've been keeping up on her Daily Ranch blog then you know she has not had it easy. When I get home, I will take the rest of the week off so I can help her get back on her feet. My trip home also coincides with the start of the summer guesting season. Our good friends Karen & Aud are coming out for an unprecedented 20 days, and their son Alex will be with them for at least a week of that. They are really great about pitching in where ever help is needed, so my hope is that Christie can recover pretty easily.

The big news for me is that the next week, I have the opportunity to work from home. My boss agreed to a trial week offsite to see how it goes. So, even though I have to work, I will still be home for a week and a half, which will be the most I've seen Christie since heading off to Chicago in March. I'm so excited I can barely concentrate at work. I'm doing my best though!

You have the right to be annoyed

Now that I've moved back to "the city" I guess I have to deal with attitudes and prejudices held by the public. I'm a firm believer that regardless of what the media says, folks are basically decent. If everyone worked off that assumption I think the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, I found a place in Naperville, IL that doesn't seem to have faith in the common man.

I was going to meet up with a friend of mine to get a free chair. He had a recliner he didn't need, and offered it to me to help furnish my apartment. We agreed on a time, and I headed over to his place on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I called him on my way over, and he was running late, so when I got there, I parked in front of his house, rolled down the window and listened to the radio. A Prairie Home Companion was on NPR so I didn't really mind sitting and waiting.

My friend lives in one of those neighborhoods that is all curvy streets and cul-de-sacs. Very family oriented, with big yards and little traffic. I was facing the entrance to my friend's dead-end when a police car turned down his street. My first thought was that it was nice to know the cops even patrolled little neighborhoods. Then the patrol car accelerated in a manner I can only describe as aggressive, and another patrol car turned into the neighborhood. Somehow I just knew they were there for me.

The faster car pulled around the cul-de-sac and blocked me from behind while the second car parked in the middle of the street blocking me from the front. As I said, I'm not one to think ill of people without cause, but it was clear to me that one of my friend's neighbors had called the cops on me. It was also clear to me why they called the cops. Had I been parked in a shiny BMW or a Hummer they wouldn't have given me a second look. However, I was sitting in my newest pride and joy, a 1994 Nissan Sentra Coupe.

My car is the epitome of Basic Transportation. It is old, has a few rust spots, door dings, and paint chips, and the trunk no longer closes perfectly due to a rear-end collision in the car's recent past. I paid $2,000 cash for this car and was pleased to find that two grand can still buy a decent car that runs well and gets good gas mileage. Just to be clear, this is a nice, older car, not a sh*tbox.

All of this went through my head before the nice officer could approach me. When he did, he asked what I was doing there. I told him I was meeting my friend who was running late, and pointed at his house. He asked for my friend's name and my ID. I provided both, politely. I even offered a copy of my temporary registration for the car, since I had an in-transit tag issued by the state of Montana taped in the window and I could tell the officer was mighty curious about it. He took both and went to the other squad car presumably to find out if I was a dangerous criminal.

While Officer One and Officer Two conferred my friend drove up. He had to negotiate around the cars blocking the road but eventually headed for his driveway. The officers asked him if he knew me and when he confirmed my story, they returned my license and registration, thanked me and departed. As they departed a third squad car pulled into the neighborhood, but after a quick conference with the other officers, Officer Three departed without a glance at me or my friend.

It is moments like these that I'm glad my Momma raised me right. Just as I knew the cops were coming for me, I also knew that whoever called them was peeking through their curtains hoping for a show. I was sorely tempted to shout "are you happy now?!?" or stand in the middle of the cul-de-sac and give a 360 degree one-finger salute. However, due to my good upbringing, I simply went inside with my friend. Besides, good entertainment ain't cheap and I don't work for free.

You may be wondering if I jumped to conclusions, and the truth is we'll never know. However, one point of evidence in my favor was shared with me as my friend and I loaded the recliner into his minivan. Evidently the lady two doors down gives piano lessons and strange cars are often parked on the street with parents waiting to pick of their children. To his knowledge, this is the first time anyone called the cops.

Chapter n+1: A New Adventure

Given the "downturn" or "slowdown" or whatever you want to call it, Christie and I have been increasingly leery of returning to Bank of America. The question quickly became, if not BoA, where? We figured I'd have to move at least temporarily in order to find work. Well, if I'm going to move, it should be somewhere I'm already comfortable, so that means Chicago.

I have a ton of contacts in Chicago, and notification of my intent to relocate brought lots of interesting possibilities. The most interesting was at Sky Road LLC, a software company catering to small to medium sized trading firms and hedge funds. Their business model is to wrap up existing software and vend it as an ASP (Application Service Provider) which means their customers don't have to have a large IT department, like BoA or Citadel. The best thing about Sky Road is that I already knew 5 of the 20 employees, so I felt confident I would fit in. Also, with my 10+ years working on financial software they felt confident in my abilities.

Now it is the beginning of my third week at Sky Road. I am staying in an extended stay-type hotel and getting to and from work using their shuttle. I have been looking for apartments and found a nice place 1.3 miles away from the office. My next big thing will be buying a car. I figure we can get a halfway decent car for a few thousand dollars. My commute is short, and beyond work, I just need to get groceries and maybe go to a movie now and then.

At work, I definitely jumped right into the deep end, but was pleased to discover I am a good swimmer. My experience working for banks and hedge funds has already paid dividends because I understand what is being asked of me and can accurately discourse on many topics. My first task is a big one, slated to take 6-8 weeks. I understand how to do this sort of thing, but the challenge before me is to figure out how Sky Road does this sort of thing so that I don't have to throw away my first effort, or heaven forbid, reinvent the wheel.

Christie is holding up pretty well at the ranch. We've got people helping with the feeding right now so she doesn't have to do too much on a given day. It is my hope she can use some of this time to recuperate from the long and difficult winter. Spring is around the corner and with it comes foaling season. Christie has a long list of guests slated to visit this summer, so she will rarely have to handle the ranch all alone.

We've been apart like this before, but during the year I lived in Chicago before working remotely from the ranch, I was able to travel home every other weekend. This time around money is a little tighter so we are jumping into this new adventure not knowing how it will work. One thing I do know, even with so many miles between us, we will figure it out together, and that makes all the difference.

I'm still standing

Hello dear readers. I haven't been ignoring you (much) I have just been kinda busy being unemployed. They say that looking for work is a full time job. Well, "they" don't know the half of it. By the time you sleep until 10am, eat breakfast, and check your e-mail, it is time for lunch. And, if lunch is at all strenuous, an afternoon nap ensues. It is a good day when I can send out one or two job applications, and I think you know not every day is a good day.

OK, I'll let you off the hook, I'm not really just a shiftless layabout, I'm much, much more. In addition to being a shiftless layabout, I'm also a full time ranch hand right now. If you ask me, and I think you did, or you wouldn't be reading my blog, it could not have come at a better time. Christie didn't get her usual boost in heath this summer, so going into the winter, her tank was running low. When I got laid off, she could barely manage one of the two daily feedings by herself, and none of the other things, like pumping water into tanks or putting out supplements. While I have been doing my fair share of laying-about, I have also been able to take over most of the day-to-day ranch chores.

This week we replaced "most" with "all" as Christie went to Iowa to help out her cousin. I'm doing all the feeding, watering, and supplementing by myself right now. Luckily, all of the new fencing is holding up quite well, so breakouts have been a minimum. There's a weak spot between the Boys and Mamas herds, and some of the more adventurous horses, like Sahara and Ghost are doing some mingling. I'll probably have to trudge out there at some point and make a temporary repair, but it isn't too urgent right now.

On the job front, a couple of interesting possibilities exist, but I don't want to count chickens before they hatch or anything. (Actually, I've never been a fan of counting chickens so I may have a bias.) Anyway, I'll be sure to let you all know if anything "hatches".

Yo Yo Me

I am a human yo-yo, and Bank of America is the inept kid who just bought me at the dollar store.

My contract was to end with 2007, but they managed to extend it for 2 months. Who looks a gift horse in the mouth? Well, on Wednesday the 30th I was informed that Thursday the 31st would be my last day. That's right, 24 hours notice. Very nice. Last year I was ticked because they only gave me 9 days notice. If I'm fallible enough to sign on with them again, I will probably be told after the fact, like "ok, Dave, your contract expired last Tuesday, don't bother filling out a timecard for this week..."

The truth is that I'm not really bitter. When I signed on with the group I worked for in 2007, they told me they only had funding until the end of the year. When they extended it two extra month, it was my hope that would bridge me over into the new budget season so I could find another group. This loss of a month of work is going to hurt, but I can't say I didn't see it coming.

If they come back with another contract in a few weeks, I will probably take it, because working from home allows me to be here when Christie needs me. In the meantime, if any of you out there need a slightly used (aka experienced) Java developer, let me know.

As for toy metaphors, in 2008, I am going to strive to be a Slinky. I will walk down stairs, alone or in pairs. I don't know what that means metaphorically speaking, but you have to admit that making a slinkety sound has its perks.

Let there be heat

Yesterday our wood stove conked out. It filled the house with smoke instead of sending it up the chimney. Smoke was even oozing (can smoke ooze?) out of every little crack and crevice in the stove. It wasn't heating, and we were quickly reduced to opening doors and windows to vent the place. Did I mention it got down to negative 30 degrees up here last night? Ole' Murphy was prosecuting us to the full extent of his law, I can tell you that.

We got a roaring fire going in the fireplace, which helped. Our fireplace has a blower built in so that once the firebox gets heated, warm air can be circulated. It was really nice within about 5' of the fireplace, and the rest of the house stayed just above 50 degrees. We figured it was also a great time to run the self clean cycle on our oven (500 degrees for three hours or so).

Once we had a little heat in the place we tried to tackle the stove. It just started smoking really bad, do we have a green log in there? We took all the burning wood out of it and threw it in the snow outside. Nope, smoke still coming into the house. There's a lot of ash in there, maybe it would breathe better if we cleaned it out. I dug a trench in a snow bank and took 8 big buckets-full of ash out. Nope, still too smoky. Ah, there is a door for removing the ash that falls down the chimney. Took another bucket of ash from there. Nope, still smoky. Well, let's sleep on it, thank goodness for down comforters.

At 5AM this morning, we were awake and decided to try using the shop vac to clean out the horizontal portion of the chimney that goes out the back of the stove. (To do this, I had to get the generator to start in -30 degrees and then find the shop vac out in the garage. Brrrr!!!!) There was about an inch of ash there, but removing it didn't fix anything. However, while shining a light around in there, I saw that there was no opening in the back for the smoke to go up. I got a pole and tested this and confirmed that there seemed to be a blockage.

At 8:01AM we started calling chimney sweeps. It must be the off season for them because of the 4 in the phone book, two were out of town. One was too far away and didn't want to drive all the way up here, but the 4th guy was willing. He got here as the sun came out blazing brightly in complete defiance of the temperature. He agreed that there appeared to be a blockage and hopped up onto the roof with his brushes and poles. There was quite a bit of accumulated ash and creosote in the chimney, so it needed cleaning, for sure. However, at a certain point, his brush got stuck. He hit something metal. A glance inside the wood stove revealed he was banging on the horizontal pipe from above. He figured out that the horizontal pipe had somehow gotten pushed back into the chimney too far and had become closed off by the back wall of the chimney. It is a good thing he was a small man, for he was able to climb halfway into our stove and get a vicegrip clamped onto the pipe. He pulled it out a ways and lit a piece of paper. The smoke went up!!!

Now we have a very clean wood stove and chimney and a nice warm fire going. We stole the big coals out of the fireplace to jump-start the wood stove and now it is warming up in here. My nose is still cold, but there is no longer any frost on my window. We were able to settle out of court with Murphy for about $150, which could have been much worse.

Maybe it'll work THIS time...

When will I ever learn? I keep doing the same thing expecting a different result. I'm going to state a bit of wisdom that you can all feel free to quote back to me until I learn my lesson. Here it is:

If you think you might need tire chains, then you do need tire chains.

Wow, when I say it like that it makes so much sense. Of course, if someone had said that to me yesterday, I would probably have dismissed it as hogwash.

Yesterday Christie had to take Cordova (Cory) to town to meet a transport truck. Cory is going to live with some very nice people in Colorado Springs. He was a champ, he even waded through a snow drift to squeeze into the trailer because I backed it into a corner. Trust me, for a half-Arab yearling, that is downright amazing.

I'm sure some of you are wondering why the trailer was parked awkwardly. I'll tell you outright it was because I was too tired to care. But I get ahead of myself. Let's backtrack 4 hours to the time when Christie sweetly asked, "Honey, could you help me hook up the trailer?" I left my desk, knowing I would be right back to work with none the wiser.

We hooked up the trailer as snow fell softly, giving the world a fuzzy aspect. We decided, smartly I thought, to pull the trailer up to the top of the driveway before adding the weight of a horse. I took a run at it, and almost made it too. The truck made it past the steep part, but the trailer didn't and I started to spin. OK, no problem, I'll just back up and a take another run at it, with a little more speed I won't get stuck. Evidently I left my mental capacity in my other briefs, because I managed to back the trailer straight down the driveway, and into our yard. The driveway turned, I didn't, the rest is history.

About this time, I realized it would have been good to have tire chains. So, we decided to put them on. This was a terrible time to try to locate the chains we hadn't used since last winter. Well, we couldn't find them in our garage, but we did find the chains for the Dodge (our ranch truck). These were a little too big for the Chevy, but we decided that with enough bungee cords anything will fit. With some digging, we got the chains around the tires, latched and tightened them. I got back in the truck and pulled the trailer about 6". While I didn't manage to get the trailer back up onto the driveway, I did dig a pair of impressive holes with the back tires.

The chains were slipping and starting to come off the tires, one link snapped under the stress. Since it was clear the Dodge's chains weren't going to work for the Chevy, we decided to use the Dodge. We unhooked the trailer from the Chevy, drove it out of the holes it dug, and took off the chains. Then we repaired the broken link and installed the chains on the Dodge. This was all around much easier, since the chains were meant to fit these tires and it didn't hurt that the Dodge was parked on a nice flat, level section of our plowed driveway.

With chains properly attached, I backed up the Dodge to the trailer and hitched it up. Chains aren't a cure all for bad traction, but they help a lot. After several times moving the trailer a few feet, I managed to get turned back onto the driveway. By then, the trailer and I were pointing downhill instead of up, but that could be remedied. I went down by the barn and turned around. Then, with a mighty roar, the Dodge, the trailer, and I went tearing up the driveway ... literally. Snow was flying everywhere, from the sky and from the tires. When I got to the steep part I didn't hesitate and we made it up onto the road. (I parked the truck and trailer in our turnout, and that is when I backed the trailer into a snow drift.)

Wow, I thought, that was much easier with chains.

If you think you might need tire chains, then you do need tire chains.

The year is dead, long live the year

New Year's has never really had much meaning for me. It was simply another holiday from work. This year, however, I see the new year in a whole new light. As 2007 was very rough on Christie and I, I see 2008 as an opportunity. This year will be a year of healing for us, a time to get back on our feet and recover from all the shocks of 2007.

What is more, I have the strong feeling that 2008 is going to be a great year for us. For the first time in years we are entering the new year free of debt. Well, there's still the mortgage and the car payment, but everyone has those. I'm talking about unsecured debt, like medical bills and credit cards. For the first time in a long time, none of that is hanging over our heads, and I blessed that we are so fortunate. It was worth the hardship.


In my last post, the glass was definitely half empty. I'm not so manic as to declare it is now half full, let us just say there is water in the glass. It is what it is. Could we have more personal and family emergencies in 2008? Of course. Are we in a better place to handle them when they arise? I think we are.

I wish everyone a safe and gentle 2008.

I want my money back

I may be showing my age, but how many of you have heard Meatloaf's Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back? Well, that is how I've been feeling lately about 2007. I sat down to write a this blog post and while thinking about what to write, I found myself humming the song, so this is what you get.

In general I'm not a whiner. I can take my lumps and keep on going, perhaps even better than some. However, this was an incredibly difficult year at the ranch, for a lot of reasons. I won't bore you with every little thing, but a few of the highlights are:

• I got laid off work with only 9 days notice (two months later, got my job back)
  
• Christie fractured a vertebra while riding
  
• An unexpected death in Christie's family
• The Black Cat fire and midnight evacuation of 30 horses
• Wind storms that destroyed our fences in almost every pasture
• I had to manage the ranch alone while Christie was out of town for several weeks helping her cousin
• Two bent axles on our horse trailer
  

I could make the list much longer, but then I think I really would be a whiner. My point is that if only a few of these events had happened, I wouldn't be humming "life is a lemon..." This year, though, I feel battered and bruised, and if any of you have any connections at the Customer Service Center of the Universe, I'd like a refund for 2007. Barring that, I would settle for a mulligan or even a do-over.

Now, in order to keep my readership, I'm going to end on a good note. In the past few weeks we found a crew of guys at a local temp agency to help rebuild our fences. They have done amazing work, putting up hundreds of yards of jack-leg. The stallion has not escaped in weeks, and Christie and I actually have time to enjoy each other's company. Some of the stress of the past few months is finally starting to dissipate now that we know our fences will hold up.

The Wind also Blows

Today it is snowing ... on only half of the ranch. The snow is coming down outside my West-facing window, but not outside my North-facing window. If anyone can explain that to me I'd love to hear it. Meanwhile, I'll tell you about yesterday's weather, which wasn't so much strange and frightening.

The wind roared through our little valley yesterday. It wasn't just gusty, it was constant and very strong. From my office window I watched trees bending at unnatural angles. A rabbit hutch, which took three strong guys to move, was casually flipped over on its roof. The same for the goose shelter. Roofing was ripped off the small barn, and tarps were torn from hay stacks. However, the biggest issue, by far, was the downed trees.

I watched with guts twisting as more and more trees fell. Oh, there went a fence in the Upper Little Barn pasture. Ah, another one blocking the driveway. By the time I finished work for the day, 8-10 trees had fallen across our driveway. I had to clear these before I could take food to the Middle 20 and Back 20. Before I could do that, I noticed that there were too many black horses over by the young boys herd.

Ryder and Blackie were in the Goat Barn pasture while we fixed fences knocked down last week. The fences got fixed, but I hadn't gotten around the moving them back yet. Well, the fence that borders the property to the South was almost completely destroyed by several fallen trees, so Ryder and Blackie decided to go exploring. I got them put back in Ryder's pasture (Lower Little Barn) and grabbed my chainsaw.

I lost track of time, but it must have been a little over an hour later, I straightened up, looked around and realized I had cleared enough of the driveway for a vehicle to pass. It was well past dusk, but I could still see to walk around so I quickly got the feeding done. By the time that was done, it was pretty much full dark. I was able to see by the light on our little John Deere lawn tractor (which we use to haul hay around for feeding) that there had been a few trees down along Mill Creek Road, but that other people had cut and cleared them. When I got to the little road that leads to The Cabin, I noted at least 4 large trees that fell from the Middle 20 to the Back 20, taking out fences on both sides of the road. They will have to wait for another day.

The feeding was done, but unfortunately I couldn't go in yet because I didn't have any firewood in the house or on the porch. Luckily I knew just where to go for some fresh fallen timber, some of which was even already dead and dry. I won't complain about my various aches and pains, I'll just say I slept really well last night. Today after work I will try to survey more of the damage while there's daylight.

The Lone Rancher

I don't wear a mask. I don't ride a fiery horse with the speed of light. I avoid clouds of dust. And, I'm never heard saying "Hi-yo Silver," although I do let slip a "Weee doggie" now and then. In spite of all this, I am The Lone Rancher.

Christie is back in Iowa for two weeks helping out her cousin, so I have the ranch to myself. In preparation, we hired some help and got a huge amount of jack-leg fence built. This makes my job a bit easier, which turns out to be a good thing.

Yesterday, I fed the horses morning and evening, managed three escapes, and repaired a gate. I also attempted to work my full shift on my day-job, but managed only about 6.5 hours. It seems horses don't wait until after 4PM to escape from their pastures.

Two of the escapes were from a known section of down fence, but I ran out of daylight (thanks to daylight "savings" time). I'm hoping to repair that section tonight after work. The other escape came when the stallion apparently smashed a gate in our new jack-leg fence. Mares and babies were running everywhere as the stallion attacked some and tried to mount others. That gate is now just another section of fence as my "repair" was to nail up some rails over the gap.

It is a good thing we didn't make life any easier, or I'd just sit around eating bonbons all day.

Tagged!

I've been tagged by PastorMom, so here goes!

1. Who eats more? That one is easy, me.
2. Who said “I love you” first? I think Christie did, I remember long conversations about the "L" word.
3. Who is the morning person? Me, by necessity.
4. Who sings better? Probably me, Christie has a great voice but feels she needs someone to follow.
5. Who’s older? I am, by a year and a half.
6. Who’s smarter? Christie is. We are both pretty bright, but her brain works faster than mine.
7. Whose temper is worse? Oooh, that is a tough one. I lose mine more easily, but Christie is more ferocious.
8. Who does the laundry? Christie does, but I'm better at folding.
9. Who does the dishes? Neither one of us. :(
10. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? We are both on the right side for us. We tried the other way around and it felt wrong, so this way must be right.
11. Whose feet are bigger? Mine.
12. Whose hair is longer? Christie's.
13. Who’s better with the computer? I am, but then, I'm a software engineer. Christie is the resident webmaster of Wild Mountain Farms.

14. Do you have pets? We have 3 dogs and 4 house cats. Those are the traditional pets. We also have 28 horses, three goats, 4 geese, 2 ducks, and about 10 chickens, some of whom have names.
15. Who pays the bills? It used to be me, but Christie does it now.
16. Who cooks dinner? I probably cook a majority of the meals. There are some things we collaborate on, but I enjoy it more, so I do it more.
17. Who drives when you are together? I do, so Christie can save her energy for more important things.
18. Who pays when you go out to dinner? Usually me, because I have always have my wallet, but Christie doesn't like to carry a purse.
19. Who’s the most stubborn? My nickname growing up was The Negotiator, so that would be Christie.
20. Who is the first one to admit when they’re wrong? Most often me, but Christie is getting better at it.
21. Whose family do you see more? Christie's, her sister lives in town, less than an hour away.
22. Who named your pets? Joint venture.
23. Who kissed who first? She kissed me.
24. Who asked who out? She asked me out.
25. What did you do on your first date? We went to The Olive Garden for dinner in Kalamazoo.
26. Who’s more sensitive? I get my feelings hurt easier, if that is what you mean.
27. Who’s taller? I am, by 4-5 inches, which means her head fits right on my shoulder.
28. Who has more friends? Neither of us has a particularly wide circle, but I would say she does.
29. Who has more siblings? Christie has two, I have one.
30. Who wears the pants in the relationship? This is a partnership, we are in it together, so we make the big decisions together.

Cutting down trees for firewood

We finally got all our hay in for the winter, and it is stacked high and tarped down. We should be able to manage feeding through the winter as the piles are conveniently located. That leaves fencing and firewood as our two top jobs. We are building jack-leg fence, so now both of our top priorities require the ability to handle a chainsaw well.

I learned how to handle a chainsaw from my friends and neighbors. They taught me the right and wrong way to drop a tree, and how to do so safely. For those of you who don't have the benefit of Curry, Bob, Jarred, and Pete, and Aud, here's a great set of instructional videos I found online.

http://www.expertvillage.com/interviews/felling-trees.htm

Enjoy.

New, old friends

From earlier posts, you might remember Michal, the girl from Chicago who stayed with us for the summer and helped out around the ranch. Well, her parents, Naomi and Larry are visiting us for the week. This is their first vacation without the kids for a long, long time and they are very excited. We met Naomi when she brought Michal out, but Larry couldn't come that time. It will be good to get to know them, even though we feel like we know them already through their daughter.

They are here to do some horseback riding, hiking, biking, and sightseeing. It seems Larry also has a fondness for power tools and he took the afternoon yesterday to cut and notch a whole bunch more posts for building jack-leg fences. I was dreading that job, and it seems Larry has given me a reprieve.

Christie, Naomi, and Larry are getting ready to go on a ride. Since it is 30 degrees out, I think I'll stay in my nice warm office.

Now this is progress

For those of you worried that we won't get our fencing project finished, fear not. This week, we have erected a total of 10' of jack-leg fence. Actually, we didn't do any fencing, Christie did it all. It was our intention to go out there every evening after work and put up a couple more jacks. Well, you know what the best laid plans oft do...

Tuesday Christie went to town to babysit our nieces while I tore down some old fencing that was in our way. Progress was made, for sure, but no actual fence was built.

Wednesday we discovered that Spirit, Nefertari's baby from this Spring, was limping and had a cut on his left, rear leg above the hock. After bringing him to the barn and getting his leg cleaned up, we realized it was a pretty bad cut near the tendon. So, we loaded him into the trailer and took him to Dr. Brown ... after hours, of course. Dr. Brown got him cleaned up, but it was a pretty serious cut, so Spirit will need to have the wound cleaned and redressed every day for a few weeks. No fence was built.

Thursday, while I worked, Christie went out and worked on the fence. She got one jack-leg set with all the rails perfectly spaced, so now we have a template to work from. Then she was off to town for a lesson with the gaited horse trainer. After the lesson she realized that one of the trailer tires was all shredded and definitely flat. The guys at the stables helped her change the tire, but they noticed that the trailer had a bent axle and that the mounting brackets for the axle were twisted and broken, hence the ruined tire. She got a recommendation for a trailer repair guy and dropped it off. He is going to get back to us with an estimate of the damage. Ten feet of fence built.

Friday, today. Our hay people were able to load up the flatbed trailer during the week, so we need to get back to bringing in hay only 23 ton to go! We're working on a loan from the bank to pay for the hay, but the banker seems to be dragging his heels a bit. If we can finalize the loan today, we will be getting more hay, otherwise, maybe ... perhaps ... there's a chance ... of getting some more fences built.

Two-fer Tuesday

I don't usually post twice in one day, I wouldn't want my dear readers to get the wrong idea about my level of commitment.

However, here is a quick bonus post. Below is a short video of Cami's baby running across the pasture. I captured this from my office window. He doesn't have a name yet, if any of you have suggestions.