I haven’t been posting much here lately. I’d like to think that meant I was doing great in all things and that I didn’t need a place to vent. However, I suspect that my seasonal depression is starting; I have felt flat and tired more than not lately.
A week or so ago Michele remarked on this, saying something to the effect of “you are going into your annual depression.” I remember bristling at her statement, a sure sign it was a truth I didn’t want to hear or face. Yuck.
Every fall I say that I am not going to fall into the same old pattern of depression that has plagued me for most of my life. And every fall there comes a day when I realize, and can admit, that I have slipped into depression in spite of myself. I know that in recent years my low point hasn’t been as depressed, that I am less depressed overall. Still I’d like to go through a holiday season without feeling like a tired old man.
Somethings are helping; my employment situation is stable once again. My relationship with my brother is at an all-time high, and my relationship with my parents is also doing better than ever before. Thanks to the beautiful soul I married I am now looking forward to Christmas. We decorate the house, and have fun wrapping presents and watching old Christmas movies. She has shown me the joy and wonder that is the true spirit of the season.
And I am better at taking care of my inner child, who was so hurt and confused all those years ago when Amy died. There is a small piece of him that is still selfishly angry about the lack of Christmas that year. Instead of fighting his anger I now know to express in it positive ways. By opening myself up to those ancient emotional memories I am able to move past them and develop new, happier memories of Christmas.
This year will be a challenge to me as it will be the first Christmas I’ve spent with my family in several years. The work I have done to change the holiday from a time of mourning to a time of joy will be put to the test. Even though Amy will have been dead 30 years this Christmas, the lack of open emotional expression by my family, as a family, still casts a pall on the day.
I have grieved for Amy and mourned her loss time and again. I’ve expressed the anger I had at her for dying, and at my family for not understanding my turmoil over her death. And I have forgiven myself for surviving when she did not. Now I need to truly celebrate her living and her memory by letting the joy and love of the Christmas season into my heart once again. When I can do that I will regain a connection to her that I have been missing for such a long time.
Once upon a time I wrote about using ssh to connect to a server outside of the restrictive environment at my primary client site. Since that time I have been happily connecting from my laptop, which isn’t logged into the LAN, to my NT workstation, which is logged in, and from the NT workstation to a server out in the wilds of the internet.
Originally I was using a fine piece of software for the ssh connection and subsequent TCP/IP tunnel called ‘SSHTunnelManager.’ A fairly straight forward user interface made it easy enough for me to create the necessary port forward to allow my laptop to connect to the open ssh process running on the NT workstation.
However, I recently learned about scp, or secure copy, on Unix and wanted to be able to use it to move files to and from my laptop. In order for this gem to work I needed to forward port 22 through the tunnel. SSHTunnelManager has one flaw, it doesn’t allow forwarding of ports owned by root, or in other words, any port numbered 1024 or less.
So I resorted to using the command line interface (terminal) and a command like this to make my secure connection and necessary port forwards:
sudo ssh -C -l_userid_ -L22:localhost:22 -L8080:localhost:8080 10.21.85.76The breakdown goes like this:
sudo allows the command that follows to be run as if you were logged in as root. You supply your password, and provided your ID has administrator access, the command runs.
ssh -C run the ssh command, and the first option is ‘-C’ or compress all traffic. Should get some performance gain from this.
-l_userid_ the id on the remote system you want to log in using
-L22:localhost:22 forward local port 22 to the remote system and once there resolve it as localhost:22. (remember in my case the remote system has another set of forwards to a server beyond the firewall.)
-L8080:localhost:8080 again forward local port 8080 to the remote system and once there resolve it as localhost:8080.
10.21.85.76 the IP address of the remote system I wish to log in to using the userid specified in the ‘-l’ parameter.
So that I don’t have to type this command every time I wish to connect I created an alias in my .tcshrc file, like this:
alias remote ‘sudo ssh -C -l_userid_ -L22:localhost:22 -L8080:localhost:8080 10.21.85.76’
Now I just open a terminal window and type ‘remote’ to connect. I’m prompted for my administrator id first (from the sudo command) and then for my login password on the remote server.
Now I have full HTTP and HTTPS browsing and scp ability from my laptop.
It all started with buying a large screen television. Now it has blossomed into repainting one room, a new entertainment center, completely re-doing another room, and maybe refinishing ALL the wood trim in the house.
We bought ourselves a brand new 57" HDTV. Looking over the room where it was to live we decided that we needed more space. So we moved things around and ended up putting a chair from the living room into our bedroom. The living room theme, if you can call it that, is taupe. The bedroom is patterned after the “Water Lilies” painting by Monet. A taupe chair clashes somewhat with dusty rose and lavender.
So we set off to get the chair reupholstered. The cost estimate for the chair alone was as much as it had cost brand new. Since we tossed in a few other goodies we ran the estimate up to almost $2400. Once we slept on the idea we each felt that $2400 spent in other rooms of the house would be a better investment. Our bedroom is already in wonderful shape. If we move the big chair to another room, then it’s taupe-ness isn’t a problem.
We decided that the living room would be our next project. We looked at and picked out a new throw rug and a new entertainment center to house the TV. And we are getting estimates on having the room repainted after some minor patch work to one wall. This will use up the $2400 very nicely, and at the same time make our living room much more to our liking.
While at the furniture store we saw a very nice kitchen/dining room table. Currently we are using eating end of our kitchen as our office. Once upon a time we thought about converting the 3-season porch into an office, but we have continually put that project off. Over lunch yesterday we talked about moving the “I love Lucy” collection to the unused bedroom, which neither of us wants as an office, and turning the Lucy room into our office. We’d rip up the carpet and put down a laminate wood floor, slap some new paint on the walls, add a ceiling fan, and get me a new desk. Ta-da! A new office, with hard wood floors and matching desks, and an actual eat-in kitchen. This would give us an excuse to buy a table and chairs. That leads (eventually) to re-decorating the kitchen. Maybe next year.
Of course putting down a blonde or light colored wood floor will clash with the darker colored trim in the new office. Once you strip that and re-paint it then the trim in the rest of the house starts to look out of place, so while you are re-doing trim you may as well do it all. It’s an 1800 square foot house with an appropriate number of windows and doorways. There’s a lot of trim. Oh and the interior doors are dark to match the existing trim. They’d need to be stripped and redone as well.
All this just to watch letterbox movies without the black bar at the top and bottom of the picture.
Saturday was spent running around doing little errands and visiting family. In the morning we went to an interior design shop looking for ideas and estimates on reupholstering a large overstuffed chair to use in our bedroom. Originally the chair was taupe colored and our room is soft pastels. The estimate for the chair alone was as much as it had cost new 2 years ago. By the time we thru in some shams for the bed and a small table cloth for an accent table in the room we were up over 2 grand.
After a wonderful soup and sandwich lunch we crashed at home for a couple of hours before going to see my parents. My father had some computer related questions concerning the use of Windows XP Professional on his new laptop. After playing consultant-to-the-family for an hour or so, we had dinner with them at a chinese restaurant.
By 8:30, when we got home we were both wiped out. In the middle of the night Michele woke up having bad dreams; when I asked her what was scaring her she said we had spent too much money on “that”, waving in the general direction of the chair. I said we hadn’t spent any money yet as I hadn’t dropped off the deposit yet. We agreed not to.
On Sunday she had no recollection of our 2 am conversation, but was still upset about spending so much money “just to reupholster a chair.” After talking it out we both felt it would be money better spent if we started on another room. The master bedroom and bath are in wonderful shape now, but the living room needs some help.
I baked a yellow cake and made chocolate butter cream frosting for it. Once the cake was done, frosted, and in it’s tupperware home, we showered and headed out to Lone Star for lunch. Our meal there was terrific, and we celebrated by going to our favorite furniture store to look at entertainment centers for the new television. We found one we both liked almost immediately, and a beautiful multi-colored area rug that has the sand/gold color we want to use for the walls in the living room. Now we just need to pick out some paint and paint the room and it’ll be much better.
After making the purchase arrangements we came home and collapsed in front of “West Wing” reruns. Later we made meatless-pasta from a jar and had magnificent cake for dessert.
All in all it was a great weekend.
You?
Last week’s Dock meme, started by this O’Reilly story and given legs by this Kottke posting was neatly summarized by this Gruber bit. I indeed found some new applications and have started using Launch Bar as a result. I also added several new blogs to my daily read list.
I got to wondering what people have in their menu bar. I find that I have two sets of applications, those that have good menu bar access and those that work better from the Dock. The image below is my menu bar.
{{ $image := .ResourceGetMatch “menubar_items.png” }}
from left to right: Tiger Launch, Location X, CodeTek Virtual Desktop, Konfabulator, AppleScript, iChat AV status (or Proteus when it is running), Keychain access, sound control, display control, charge indicator, iSync, clock, and Launch Bar.
Between the menu bar and the Dock I have immediate access to 40 applications. Maybe I need a life beyond computers…. nah.
I finally got around to deleting the accumulated spam from September, a mere 5009 messages this time around. This brings my annual total up to 52,711 spams.
My averages are now 5,856 per month and 193 per day. I expect to get just over 70,000 for the year now.
I’ve been reading a lot of good things about C-Command’s SpamSieve . The latest release works with Apple’s Mail.app, but only if you are using IMAP. Currently I am using POP3. I am thinking about researching IMAP servers for OS X once Panther is released. If I could run my own IMAP server at home, then I could set my Mail client up for IMAP and only see the messages I wanted.
I’m also considering getting an IMAP server for Linux and adding it to the Linux box I am planning on setting up this fall. Having there would allow my wife to convert her e-mail protocol as well, and neither of us would have an IMAP server running on our daily use machines. Of course this requires that I get off my duff and setup the Linux machine. Which means stringing CAT-5 through the crawl space, or buying wireless router and a PCI-wireless card for the Linux machine.
Or I could just vegetable out on the couch and watch Survivor.
Yesterday Michele and I finally took the HDTV plunge and bought a 57" Sony for our home. We asked the salesmen about next-day delivery and were pleased to learn that our local Best Buy had just instituted a program guaranteeing next-day delivery for an extra $15. We plunked down our money and signed the paperwork.
This morning we started by removing the old television from the room and by moving the component stand to the side to make from for the new cabinet. One thing led to another and we ended up rearranging the entire living room, and slightly modifying our bedroom by adding a chair displaced in the process. While we were on a roll it was decided that getting the surround speakers into their proper position would be a good thing. Michele had the great idea of using two existing wall plates and their accompanying wire chases to run the speaker wires into and out of the crawl space. After two quick trips into that nether region we had fully functioning surround sound. Hubba hubba!
As the day wore on we weren’t hearing from Best Buy. Supposedly we were to get a call indicating what two-hour time range we could expect delivery. So I called and was told they were running late. I should call back in an hour. When I called back I discovered that the store’s truck was broken down. Obviously I was very frustrated at this turn of events as it meant not getting our new set today.
I was able to tell the sales person in no uncertain terms how upset and unhappy I was about this situation. I was able to do this without attacking him personally. To his credit he was able to let me say my piece without trying to defend the store or get me to feel sorry for their situation.
In the end they agreed to return the one-day delivery up-charge, and $10 more as compensation for the delay. They also agreed to put me first on the list for tomorrow and to call shortly after 7 am with an estimated time of arrival.
On the whole I am pleased with the day; the new living room arrangement makes the room much bigger and more open. And we have our surround sound speakers in place. It felt good to work with Michele on our home and we are both pleased with the result. The disappointment at not getting the HDTV this afternoon is there, but we are anticipating an evening of wonderful movies and shows tomorrow.
Michele and I just had a wonderful vacation. Along the way we discovered what makes travel a vacation and not a trip. For us, anyway, trips have goals and constraints that are beyond our control. Going on a cruise, or flight reservations, or having to accommodate family all make it more of a trip.
A vacation is about freedom from the normal, regular routine. We had three destinations, and only one that was fixed in time. Once we accomplished that we were free to go where we wanted, when we wanted. Instead of grabbing a quick meal at roadside fast-food franchises, we ventured into town and tried out restaurants we’d never heard of before. We allowed ourselves to get out of the car and relax. Without any deadlines, time wasn’t a factor, and we felt no pressure to get there and get back again.
We also had time at home before the trip with no work or other commitments. In the past we have been good about giving ourselves a day or two at home following travel, but this was the first time with time-off up front. The added relaxation and break from routine made the away portion of our vacation even better.
I know that we’ll be taking many more of these unstructured, and free to do as we please travels in the future. And I know that we finally understand what truly means vacation to us.
This afternoon my wife and I decided to purchase a new television set for our living room. We watch an increasing number of movies at home and wanted a bigger and better screen for viewing.
The local Best Buy had the set we wanted and we had them write it up for us. I filled in a check and the sales associate entered it into their system. The approval, through “Certegy” was denied. We called the 800-number to find out why. After working my way down through several layers of menus I got to listen to a recording saying that “negative information had been reported against my identification information.” For more information I could call this other number.
Calling the second number connected me with the Office Max Payment Service Center. Huh? Re-calling the Certegy number again I double checked the digits of the more information number. Calling it again I was again connected with Office Max. Working my way down through their phone system menus I eventually was told that their operators were too busy, and I was told to leave a detailed message.
Nuts.
We left Best Buy and drove the few blocks to the local Office Max and talked to the manager there. While sympathetic, there was nothing he could do to assist us. He did look up the corporate phone number for Office Max. Calling that number I was able to (eventually) speak with a live human being in the customer service area. She said that I would need to talk to someone from the Payment center and gave me the same number I had gotten before. She did offer to send them a fax asking for priority service for my call-back.
After visiting the bank and getting cash for the purchase (how odd to use cash these days) we returned to Best Buy and made our purchase. I even got them to lower the price another $50. Ha!
While loading our things in the car my cell phone rang and it was Office Max. After verifying my identity, the service representative reviewed my account and discovered a 2 1/2 year old issue that had been cleared to the satisfaction of Office Max. Obviously, Certegy hadn’t gotten their database updated properly. I asked Office Max to re-notify Certegy immediately. He said they would and that I should call them again in 2-3 business days to verify that our account had been updated.
What chaps my ass about all of this is that a mistake on the part of some company I’ve never done ANY business with, prevented me from making a purchase without the embarrassment of a refused check, the extra hassle of a bank withdrawal, and the trouble of calling several automated phone “service” centers.
One of the themes that Michele and I talk about frequently is the idea of being responsible for everything that you do or say. I think one of the major problems with our society today is the increasing reliance upon third parties to be responsible for ourselves. Sure it would cost Best Buy more to have their own credit/check verification service. But nearly losing a sale because two unrelated companies failed to properly communicate almost 3 years ago seems to be foolish.
Furthermore, shouldn’t there be some kind of penalty or watch-dog group looking out for my rights in all of this? I’m sure that there is an Association of Credit Reporting Agencies and that they are protected from lawsuits when they make a mistake that costs me. I think this is backwards.
Last Thursday evening we went to see Eddie Izzard in his new show “Sexie.” In a word it was fantastic. Michele discovered him several years ago through his HBO special, “Dress to Kill.” Since that time we have collected all of his available videos and he has become our favorite comedian.
We always said that, if he ever played anywhere near us, that we go no matter what the cost. When we discovered that he would be in Chicago, less than 4 hours drive away, we immediately got tickets.
His new show was brilliant and devastatingly funny. I haven’t laughed so hard and so long in my life. Ranging from fake breasts to a ban on assault weapons, with a screamingly funny encore about riding horses in movies, his material was superb.
And judging by the audience there are a lot of devout Eddie fans here in the US. Never before at a comedy concert have I heard a deafening roar of approval when the comedian walked on stage like I heard Thursday evening. It was like the opening of a rock concert.
We can’t wait for the video release of this show.