Life Stuff

On Friday, June 20th at approximately 5:15 p.m., our Camry died a quiet death. It was very old and it was time for it to go. When something has lived a long full life, it is not a thing of sadness when it goes softly into the long sleep. The Camry was originally my parents' and I had been driving it for almost half of my life. It was model year 1994 and had 214,000 miles on it.

Recently, it had stopped working and was out of commission for several months. When he was finally able to revive it, my mechanic friend told me that the cooling system was rusting, the transmission was going and that massive timing belt failure was imminent. The coolant was a deep orange/copper color. I took it in and had a life-extending radiator flush performed. After what seemed like an agonizing eternity, but was really an agonizing two hours, the mechanic performing the flush came to me and told me that he had done all he could; he had flushed the radiator twelve times with little effect. I thanked him and took my ailing car home.

I put in some transmission fluid, and after that it performed beautifully--almost like it used to. I drove it every day with no problems. I could almost pretend that the inevitable was not near. Then, the window died and wouldn't close. I took it into the shop and they told me the cost and asked if I really wanted to spend that much on a car that is obviously on its way out. They were able to close the window and advised I not open it again. I thanked him and took my ailing car home again.

A few weeks later, I accidentally pressed the wrong button and opened the window a smidge. I couldn't get it back up, so I performed a little open-door surgery of my own. I cut the wires that are responsible for raising and lowering the window and attached a rope to the window sled. This way, I could close the window simply by pulling on the rope and then tying it onto the door handle. It was not an elegant sight.

We, the Camry and I, went on this way for a couple months until that fateful Friday, two weeks ago. It is only now that I can bring myself to speak of it.

The day was unremarkable, unlike any other. I had driven a couple slugs to work and a couple others home. Upon arriving home, I left again to take Elise to gymnastics. I dropper her off and started home. About two miles down the road the engine cut out and I drifted over the side of the road, knowing this was it--the Camry would never move of its own accord again.

There was much discussion of whether it even made sense to pay someone to tow it to the shop. In the end, we decided we should do so, just in case. We all knew it was futile, but still we hoped. Within hours, the shop called with the cause of death; the timing belt had given out. It gave its all right up to the last. It ensured that the slugs made it home and that Elise arrived safely at gymnastics. But then it could give no more and was gone.

Farewell, Camry. We thank you.

I've posted a bunch of photos of Lori & miscellaneous family members on my family photos site. Click the screaming baby if you'd like to check them out:

Just a quick post as I'm heading back to the hospital in just a minute...

Lori Noelle was born this morning at 2:16 a.m. She weighed 7lbs., 4.8 oz. and was 19 3/4 inches long. As you can see from the picture below, she's absurdly cute:



Cyndi started having contractions around 5:30 or so yesterday evening. They got closer & closer until they were pretty intense and about 5 minutes apart at 12:45, at which point we called the doctor and he told us to head over the hospital. My parents came over to be with the other kids and we got out of the house around 1:15 a.m.

At the hospital we had to go through some registration process, even though Cyndi had pre-registered. It took forever. They wheeled Cyndi away about halfway through while I sat and waited. It took me about 20 more minutes to get to the delivery room.

By the time I got there, Cyndi had changed into a hospital gown and had had a couple more contractions. The doctor checked her and was surprised to find that she was dilated 9 cm and was basically ready to deliver. Cyndi had planned to get an epidural, but there was no time. Lori was born about 20 minutes later, almost exactly an hour after we walked out of our door. I spent more time in registration than I did in the delivery room.

Contrary to Nicole's post, while I do have a queazy stomach and did get a little grossed out, I didn't actually vomit.

Lori started crying even before the cord was cut and had great apgar scores. She took right to breast-feeding and is just a perfect, healthy little baby.

Hopefully, that clears up a few of the questions I got or inspired by my twittering during the event last night. I'll post the story of her name at some point in the next couple days.

At first, I didn't think I was going to be able to, but after mentioning the idea around and getting amused-but-positive feedback, I'm now walking at work again. I'm in a cubicle, but I'm kind of stuck back in a corner. So there's really only one person who can hear the treadmill and he said he didn't mind since he usually wears headphones anyway.

My setup is basically the same: same treadmill with keyboard, monitor and trackball on a raised desk. The cube is furnished with this modular furniture that attaches to the wall, so I just had to attach the main desk at the correct height.

The one main difference is my cooling setup. Before, I had two, sometimes three, fans blowing on me as I walked. Here, the entire building is on raised floors with the air conditioning being pumped under the whole floor and then into the office via vents in the floor tiles. To keep me cool now, I've just found a couple extra vented tiles and put one on either side of the treadmill, blowing cold air on me on both sides. I've found that if I'm not walking I actually need to cover one of them up or I get really cold.

In addition to walking, I'm trying to get back into eating better. Basically, I'm just going back to what I outlined in this post way back when.

So, I'm employed! After almost two months of unemployment with no job offers I received two offers last week. One was for a small company in downtown DC as the sole systems administrator; the other was for a huge company that does work for the government among other things, including manufacturing.

And while the whole time I was saying that, all else being equal, I would prefer to work for a small company, all else wasn't equal and I took the big company's offer. I'm now an employee of ITT's Advanced Engineering & Sciences division working on a long-term contract at the Naval Research Laboratory.

I'm working as a Linux Systems Administrator with a huge amount of technology that I've never worked with before (some, I've never even heard of). The sheer scale of things is pretty amazing/terrifying. Previously, the largest storage system I've built (or even had contact with) is right around one terabyte; I asked about how much storage we are dealing with at NRL and various systems are into the tens and even hundreds of terabytes. Everything's clustered and redundant and big. It's pretty cool.

I wrote several more paragraphs going through the factors influencing my selection, but when I hit save it kicked me out and didn't save. I'm not going to rewrite the whole thing, so he's a quick list:

• Money: both were the same
• Dress code: casual, jeans & t-shirts ok (this is big to me)
• Commute: small company wins. Downtown DC vs. across the Wilson Bridge (notorious traffic hot spot for you non-DC types). This was a big hesitation. I can slug straight into DC, but I pretty much have to drive to NRL. I tried slugging one day this week, but it was pretty ugly.
• Government bureaucracy: there will definitely be more of this at NRL, but it doesn't seem too bad.
• The work: most of what I'd be doing at the small company is similar to what I've done before. I feel quite out of my depth at NRL, so it'll be way more challenging.
• Co-workers: I've never worked with other Linux admins, and I'm quite looking forward to it.
• Security Clearance: I'll get one at NRL. This is big, too. About half of the job listings I looked at required a security clearance. Without it, I couldn't even apply. Security clearance equals more job options in the future.
• Benefits: the big company's benefits are big.

Looking at this list, I don't think it does justice to my thinking on the matter. Once I had both offers in hand, there was really no contest. What I had written before was clearer on this point.

I started Tuesday.