I made major strides on my coding project this morning.
After lunch the bureaucracy kicked in so it was into the car for a trip out west then a u-turn to go almost all the way downtown. The some phone calls to creditors to work things out.

The end result is maybe, just maybe, we will have some insurance for this delivery!

Now its time to set schedules with my clients and get back to programming

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So my final words to Sarah this morning were "bad choice of shoes."
To which she replied "I know!" as she ran through the puddles to the bus.

That sums it up quite well.

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So yesterday Amy threw Molly's Kong Air Dog Tennis Yummy Donut and Molly picked it up and returned it to Amy who immediately laid hand on it and barked "mine!" Apparently Molly didn't agree and decided to place herself on the other side of the room (hardwood floors remember). Amy refused to let go and in a swift, almost unnatural, motion that couldn't have been put together better by a famous movie director Amy in her sleeper went to the floor with righthand still on the dog toy which was still in Molly's mouth and was drug without complaint around the room in a Superman flying style. Amy was not crying, yelling or fussing. And Molly's head was up and proud. It was a sight to see. Makes me wish I had cameras going 24/7.

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Yesterday I had a hot deadline. Meet the deadline and other wonderful things regarding money could happen. Well, Tommy's IEP was scheduled for 10:30am yesterday but we had a call asking if it could move to 11:30am but then the paperwork came home noting the meeting was at 10:30am so in the morning (8:17) I called the classroom, no answer, so I called the prinicipal and left a voicemail asking for a confirmation on the meeting time. Then I called the school receptionist and was put on hold for a long time then I was told the meeting is 10:30am. Cathy arrives there and the meeting is 11:30am.

Noah was sent home sick and I managed to get him a doctor's appointment for 12:45. Slipped in a trip to the DMV after that to renew the tags on the Jeep which had expired in January.

Tommy had to be picked up from school at 3:15pm to make his 4-5:30pm group therapy. During that time I was supposed to go pick everyone else up from the house but circumstances changed the plans. I picked everyone else up at 6ish, Sarah choosing to stay home and work on "vote for me" posters, then we headed out to slip in some dinner at IHOP before moving on to get Tommy to his riding class from 7-8pm.

Since I had been up since 1am I crashed soon after arriving home. Needless to say, my deadlines were not met.

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When your wife says, "I'm just trying to talk. Why won't you listen?" she really means that she is trying to talk. Keep your lips closed and listen!

Click here for the related article Things You'll Never Hear From Your Wife with the infamous quote "I'm just trying to have a conversation!" (you really didn't think that was a link did you?)

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Quad II!

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My wife's contractions are coming more frequently and harder. As I worked this morning I took breaks on the porch in the beautifully crisp air and stared at the full moon.. the full moon! I told her that moon would cause an early delivery!

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When you are bringing the freshly spayed dog inside and telling it "you aren't supposed to leave the yard" and the pregnant wife quips "but you gave her fulltime birth control" do not reply with "so are you telling me that after my operation I can leave the yard?"

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Another critical milestone covered.

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Another milestone hit.

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Excellent. I hit a major milestone. Several more to go. Time dwindling. This day is heavily scheduled so things will be tough. Fortunately my coding style makes for rapid application design.

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I really enjoy my work!

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I love waking up this early. It's 1:30am and I'm typing on the keyboard. If only I could do this and still manage to slip in a couple of powernaps in the day.

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So here recently I've been introspective. I've acknowledged that I have become Alice in the crossroads.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice.

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where," said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

-Alice's Adventure in Wonderland Chapter 6 (read it online)

I evaluated my life and realized that I was out of control with growing dysfunction. I was not living my life, my life was living me. I have problems that cannot be fixed instantly. I carry debt that keeps wearing out my pack mules and crushing them. I am running out of mules. I have home repairs and improvements that need to be completed which will require enormous resources but other things are devouring my resources as quickly as they become available. The light at the end of the tunnel appeared to be fading and I was to a point that the walls wanted to start closing in.

Integrity. It wanted to slip.

Yes, I have a yes problem. I want to help everyone. I want to save the world. I want to teach and help all people grow. But I can't feed my family and still volunteer for every organization in town. I can't fight George Bush's destruction of the environment and fight for my son's education at the same time. I can't work on my yard on the same Saturday that I help build a bridge for the in-laws. I want so badly to be everything for everyone but in the end trying to do so makes you nothing as you cannot possibly live up to all the commitments. (mind you, I have the skills/training to delegate, empower and enlist the aid of others to make great thing happen but that is for another post; I cannot use those skills until I have pulled myself up first.) For awhile I must say "no"

Integrity. If I say I will do something, I mean to do it. If I fail on that commitment, I feel a great emptiness inside.

What have I done to change things? Things have changed for the better. My stress is down. I feel more organized. I could not pull myself together enough to read so I looked around and found my tapes for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I started listening to them in the car. I really enjoy listening to Stephen R Covey and his words reminded me of so much that I've tried to instill in myself over the years. After getting through the 7 Habits I began listening to First Things First.

Integrity. Time to clean the slate.

As an independent contractor managing cash flow is absolutely my greatest challenge. When I have a project my fulltime effort needs to be on that project but I also need a fulltime effort on finding the next project. That's living in Quad I (Important and Urgent) which leads to exhaustion. I also have a problem with trying to be too nice. I underbid projects or often allow the client to "feature creep" which is to allow additional requirements to be added at no cost nor extending the deadline. Allowing feature creep is a sure fire way to over promise and under deliver as the client will be living on original expectations of deadlines and cost.

All my life I've prided myself on honesty. To mismanage a project, ie. allow feature creep or charge too little, is not honest. It is deceptive to the client in that I promise something that I cannot deliver without significant sacrifice to family and/or health and it is dishonest to myself as I am doing work without recompense. I resolve myself to a new level of communication with my clients.

Integrity. Never be in debt.

I cannot make my debts magically disappear. I cannot even stop the accumulation of new debt as the pregnancy is racking up a bill with the doctors and hospital. I can, however, be in touch with my creditors. I can get them good faith payments and show a willingness to pay.

Integrity. Ask for help.

As I mentioned above, I love to give help to others. I love my talents and abilities. I've always enjoyed the themes of "Man Against Nature" and "Man Against Self." As for "Man Against Man" I generally prefer to be a passive observer preferably through a movie or book. Since I know I can do things for myself, I don't like to burden others with asking for help. It's my greatest weakness. If I would ask for and humbly accept help, I could put myself into a better position to offer help. What goes around comes around.

Integrity. Know where you are going.

When I was 8 I wanted to be an architect. This came after a brief desire to be an astronaut and firefighter of course. What boy doesn't? As I grew older my direction became less clear. I had brief purposes in life. For a short stint I was going to be a software mogul. Then I was planning on putting AOL out of the dialup business. But even these purposes were short term goals. Like Alice, if we don't decide on and write down an overall purpose for our lives, we will be destined to allow circumstances to decide our path. That is not to say that having an overall purpose to life limits you. In steering toward that purpose there can be many side trips and adventures. At one point I had consciously decided to "just go where the wind takes me." I cannot live that way anymore. It will take time and be difficult but I am going to develop a personal mission statement and live by it.

I am stepping forward. I have begun cleaning my desk both physically and metaphorically. A burden has lifted from my shoulders. As of today what has passed is behind me. I am putting First Things First.

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Another test 

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Why were bird feathers under the crib?

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Study: Fellatio may significantly decrease the risk of breast cancer in women (CNN Spoof page - no pictures)

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I woke at 5:15 am and could not move until 7:15.

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So how far can eye glasses and a cell phone ride on the roof of a car? 3.9 miles (6.2 km) 

The cell phone actually rode on the roof about another 3/4 mile where it was discovered still on the roof. Turning around in the car the glasses were found at a 4 way stop and survived appearing to have only been hit by a car once perhaps.

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test two version 1.0 build 651 

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testing - pre Hello upgrade (v1.0 build 549) 

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Link
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I just spent a good deal of time in Quad II. I sent an invoice to a client. I cleaned the office (which makes me more productive) some more. In the cleaning process I found my patches for my scout leader uniform as well as other assorted goodies.

Good feeling!

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	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	Quad I	Quad II
Not Important	Quad III	Quad IV

An overly simplified view of Stephen R Covey's time management system called First Things First (the 3rd habit of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) is that we want to strive to life in Quad II where things are important but not urgent. In reality most of us life in Quad I where things are urgent and important and Quad III (urgent but not important--what a terrible place) and Quad IV (not urgent and not important -- television is a good example) devour our lives. How do we get to living in Quad II? Stephen says, "steal from Quad III and Quad IV" so even if its small steps the end result will be a huge improvement in your lifestyle.

For instance, last night I choose to spend some time in Quad II with my wife. We would spend quality time in bed watching television. It would be quality time because we would talk and catch up and bond. However, television sucks the quality out of quality time giving you just time which is Quad IV. As we silently watched CSI I found sleep.

A classic example would be that of the gas for the grill. I used to always have a spare tank of propane for the grill but the law prohibits the refilling of my older tank now. Refilling the gas tank should be a Quad II. It's important that the tank be filled so we can cook dinner but not urgent since we won't grill out for several days. However, procrastination can turn a Quad II task into a Quad I task in a heartbeat. We bought steaks. Steaks having a shelf life turned getting gas for the grill into both an urgent and important task.

Quad I...not a comfortable place to live. Quad I makes you fatigued. I live primarily in Quad I and frequently get sucked into Quad III (yesterday was totally Quad III) and often find myself wanting to retreat to Quad IV (last night). My time in Quad II is minimal yet I really enjoy Quad II.

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I woke at 3am. I should have gotten to work but the dog was laying across my legs and I used that as an excuse to sleep until 5:30.

I had us budgetted to the penny and things were working. Got blindsided yesterday and suddenly there is big trouble. To top it off, my client that was going to "put a check in the mail Wednesday" sounds like he hasn't done that yet.

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I went to a friend's house this morning to help him with a 30 minute configuration of his wireless connection. I returned home 7 hours later and he still can't connect to the Internet.

The Windows 2000 machine will ping the router, ping yahoo and even show www.yahoo.com if you type the ip address into the browser. Domain names will not resolve! It is definitely a DNS issue with the machine as his wireless laptop connected to the access point with no problems and the other desktop connected via cat 45 no problem.

I'm beat.

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I rose at 3:00am and spent the first hour blogging, dog walking and posting the lottery numbers. The next part of the morning was spent exercising my brain. I figure I have to make myself my own client. Even if TN Lottery Results and Complete Lottery Info never make a dime, they are important learning tools to help me break some of the bad habits I've developed over my years of coding websites. This morning I rearranged TN Lottery Results to accommodate the new Lotto 4 game. Behind the scenes I started rebuilding the code from scratch to accommodate a clean look instead of the horror that it current is. I also started working on making the code validate which means to make code usable on any browser and adhering to standards. My next exercise was to take the database design for Complete Lottery Info from paper to computer. That is begun but will take a huge effort to complete. Now I must turn my energy to my clients.

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My blog seems to have temporarily vanished. This makes me nervous. What would happen if blogger lost my blog? All the writings, all the links...gone. I must ponder this and may consider having it published to my own server instead of bloggers from now on. Clearing FireFox's cache fixed the problem.

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This one comes as a forwarded email from my brother and sister-in-law:

Mom and Dad decided that the only way to pull off a Sunday afternoon quickie with their 8 year old son in the apartment was to send him out on the balcony with a Popsicle and tell him to report on all the neighborhood activities.

He began his commentary as his parents put their plan into operation:

"There's a car being towed from the parking lot" he shouted.

A few moments passed.

"An ambulance just drove by"

A few moments later, "Looks like the Anderson's have company" he called out.

"Matt's riding a new bike....."

"The Coopers are having sex!!"

Startled, Mother and Dad shot up in bed!!!

Dad cautiously asked, "How do you know they are having sex??"

"Jimmy Cooper is standing out on his balcony with a Popsicle too."

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Student: Couldn't once it just be easy?
Master: Would you appreciate it?

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Stress down... My accountant said, "It's going to be ok!"

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Those things need gas to keep puttering. Who woulda thunk!

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No alcohol, no soda, no chips...

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So far the day has included phone calls regarding insurance and other bureaucracy including calls about the elementary school bus. Knoxville needs to own their own buses. Contracted bus service is pathethic.

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Use them both!
Link
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An old favorite! Lemmings!

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What I should be doing:

• Invoicing clients
• Emailing clients that would have liked to have heard from me Monday morning
• Picking up two powersupplies from a client
• Talking to the IRS
• Balancing the books
• Programming for Client A
• Documenting for Client B
• Programming for client B
• Calling the school to make sure the bus is not causing my son tardys
• Calling the transportation department to find out why the school bus is picking up after school has already begun
• Arranging for the hospital for the baby that could come at anytime (ie. Medicade/TNCare etc)
• Cleaing the house

What I am doing:

• Trying to figure out why the car won't start

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Fifteen-year-old girl throws out-of-control party, destroys house. Man-on-the-street interviews suggest her punishment:spank her, twice So this girl throws a spring break party after her parents leave town. Much more than the 10-20 high school students invited show up. She hides in her room while the party smashes her windows, front door, and flat screen television (which they were trying to steal but it wouldn't fit through the front door so they attacked it with golf clubs instead); And "they carted out more stuff than the Grinch on Christmas Eve."

I'm stunned just trying to imagine it...
Link
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A very thought provoking article on MSN today.

This generation has sworn they wouldn't hit their kids. The problem is, the same anger and frustration that fueled the old model of corporal punishment didn't magically vanish merely because a generation of well-meaning parents wanted it to. Instead of letting anger lead to hitting, it now often leads to shouting. But that simple act of raising our voice, depending on what we say and how often we do it, can hold the potential for long-term harm, says Murray A. Straus, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.

The article asks the question "would you yell at a co-worker or a bumbling bagger at the grocery?" Our society allows for yelling at children but in other circumstances that doesn't apply. Why not extend this courtesy to children? I like their "9 Anti-Yelling Tips":

1. Defuse with humor (and that doesn't mean sarcasm)
2. Sing
3. Send your kid outside
4. Whisper
5. Invade your child's space (I don't like this one although I'm employed it)
6. Insist once, act immediately
7. Put yourself in time-out
8. Create a key phrase
9. Create a no-yelling rule

You can resolve a conflict without yelling in 15 steps:
Thinking Steps

1. Assess emotions
2. Accept anger, behave well
3. Gauge intensity
4. Who and what?
5. Perspective check

Talk/Listen Steps

6. Time and place
7. Avoid coalitions
8. Express appropriately
9. Listen actively
10. Admit fault

Solving Steps

11. Brainstorm solutions
12. Pros and cons
13. Decide and plan
14. Do it
15. Review/revise

Resources:

• Parents Anonymous - It's ok to seek help
• Tired of Yelling : Teaching Our Children to Resolve Conflict by Lyndon D. Waugh, Letitia Sweitzer
• The Encouraging Parent : How to Stop Yelling at Your Kids and Start Teaching Them Confidence,Self-Discipline, and Joy by ROD WALLACE KENNEDY PHD

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So the first 45 minutes of my day, begun at 4:30--almost 3:30!, have been spent confirming a quote, backing up a database for a client and beginning documentation for the client, posting lottery results, email, and some blogging. Now I'll spend 15 minutes puttering about and making some tea.

No coffee today. Maybe a coke or two.

Stephen R Covey encourages 30 minutes to an hour of stretching and cardiovascular exercise as a step toward effectiveness. I want to exercise. I like it. I have more energy and less stress. Despite all that, I can't justify it until I get a couple of things off my plate. Oh the dichotomy!

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When a plan or a schedule slips I start to stress. When they slip badly I get a bit beyond crazed. I need today to go well.

"I love it when a plan comes together."
  

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Unsafe health care in Seattle.

"The male patient, who was not identified, went up in flames after alcohol poured on his skin was ignited by a surgical instrument."

And now for bureaucratic cya and spin:

The patient died after the surgery but that was due to heart failure and not the fire, said Dr. Robert Caplan, medical quality director of Virginia Mason.

Dr. Caplan. Don't you think, in your professional opinion, that perhaps, just maybe, the patients heart failed because he was ON FIRE!?
Link
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Student: The mower fails.
Master: It has not been maintained.

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Link
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The India Daily reports "Thousands of Missiles Fired by Russian and American Forces over Earths Arctic Regions – completely unannounced – Are we fighting extraterrestrial UFOs?"

The article mentions that several news services have stated that Russia and the United States are jointly participating in a previously unannounced war game for missle defense systems but questions the secrecy.

Could a war be going on above our atmosphere? Was the Iraq situation not about oil but perhaps the location needed to better deploy our EDS?

The Columbia space shuttle could be the public's first glimpse at what was to come. Perhaps the first attack was on the Columbia which could explain why no other launches have occurred. The Columbia may have sustained phaser damage but having no defenses had to escape into the atmosphere and attempt an emergency landing. Why not escape to the space station? Simply put, under these circumstances, it certainly has been destroyed.

There are also reports that someone is manipulating the earth’s weather systems in a massive scale.

The cosmic bursts hitting the earth are also strange. The Solar flares in recent days have shown extreme abnormal behavior.

The increasing earthquakes, floods, droughts and landslides may have been caused by some artificial agents.

We have seen this evidence in the tsunamis. The 10 story "freak" wave that hit the ocean liner yesterday was obviously caused by a large, intergalactic space craft crashing into the ocean (congrats to the doughboys on that one!); or perhaps an enemy space to earth missle intended to hit a continent went off course and exploded in the ocean.

Look folks! ET has come home!
Link
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Student: I will not succumb
Master: Then you have already conquered.

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Student: Why do I show weakness?
Master: Because you have matured well.

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From Quad I to Quad III to Quad IV I can't function today and I don't know how to fix it.

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Student: Am I a good person?
Master: Would a good person have reason to doubt?

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Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
- Henry Fielding

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Newsreels of the Titanic sinking
Stoneage Erotica