Crisis Diverted, Marriage saved

I found it, a way she can have a new computer and still have a balanced marriage.

Barbie PC

My Marriage is doomed to failure

My wife and I have been together for many, many years.  If I do the math and add in time living together pre-marriage, it is somewhere around the 17-18 year mark.  Last night we had a discussion in the house that caused a shift in the balance of our relationship. 18 years of careful equality and give and take gone in a carelessly spoken comment.  If the discussion comes to pass I do not think I will be able to maintain the marriage. Destined to be another failed marriage statistic.

Today I am going to breach Blog protocol, drop the façade of Garrad/UberGeek and expose my relationship woes to the world.  I am going to bare my soul to you gentle readers and hope that somewhere an answer can be found, some solution to this heart-breaking conundrum.

My wife’s PC is failing.  It had started to exhibit signs of an immanent, catastrophic failure.  It has been patched; upgraded; tweaked and re-built from spare parts, duct tape and the occasional paper clip. It has been used/loved/abused by the 3 boys and is now shuddering on the death-bed.  My wife has suggested that maybe it is time to give it some attention.  Being the excellent geek I am I jumped on that like a kid on a Smartie.  I started discussing upgrades and patches and potential component replacements, but that is not what she wants. She wants to start clean, go new, build it from the ground up, which given the nature of the legacy equipment in it is actually a better idea.  At this point I got really excited as I pondered how to outfit my new gaming rig to replace my system when I handed it down to her.

Then she dropped the ball on me.  She does not want my pc. She wants the new one( it pains me to even type that).  That would mean that her PC would be faster and better and geekier than mine.

How in the name of all that is holy can she expect a relationship to survive that.  I am UberGeek, I am the software developer and I am the gamer, the slayer of demons and gods.  How can I possible live in a relationship so unbalanced. She has emasculated me, she has geek emasculated me.  I have nothing now.

Ok, so this is kinda tongue and cheek, but to be honest deep down inside it really does bother me.  Not relationships bother me, not hold a grudge bother me, just a little selfish whine deep down in the sub-cochlear region of my heart.  That will teach me for getting her involved in WoW. Of course knowing my luck, by the time we get the new PC she will have grown tired of playing WoW and it will be used only for surfing e-bay, yahoo mail and playing Bejeweled.  Oh the humanity!!!.

Hey Baby, why don't you take off those clothes

It’s ok mom you can keep reading. I am not talking about that kind of “Hey Baby”.

My third child, the 2 year old, is just at the transitional stage where he is outgrowing his afternoon naps. Not everyday mind you but we can keep him up on the occasional Saturdays. The nice part is we are leaving the phase of having to be home for 2+ hours on weekend afternoons. The downside is that the witching hour from 6-8pm can be challenging and our day care provider no longer gets those quiet afternoons while he is sleeping.

Of course on days when he does have a nap, especially if it is a long one, come bedtime he tries to convince us he is not tired, unlike his parents. For the most part this is not a problem as he is a very good kid and content to play in his crib till he falls asleep. But on occasion he can be a bit of a monkey. I think “busy” is the term used to describe him.

A couple of weeks ago after the 2 big boys had fallen asleep we were disturbed by a very loud bumping, thumping and giggling coming from his room. Upon investigation we had found that he had stripped his bed, completely. Pillow removed from pillowcase, both tossed over the side of the crib, soother, blankets, and stuffed animal gone. Crib sheet, crib pad and liner also evicted from the bed. Remake the bed; settle him down, head back downstairs. 15 minutes later he repeat the performance.

Since then there has only been 1 other crib stripping incident.

Last night as I was getting ready to head to bed around 11:30, the youngest started to cry. I hustled upstairs to see what was wrong. He was cold, no blankets and he was lying there shivering. I found it odd that my wife, he is far more concerned with keeping the boys warm in the winter than I tend to be, had put him to bed in just a diaper. Being a good husband I figured she had her reasons and snuggled him up, added another blanket and then went to bed myself.

It was not till this morning when I asked her about it that I understood our littlest has a future career as a Houdini impersonator. As it turns out she had put him to bed in pjs, a full piece pair complete with full toes and a big zipper. She also told me that yesterday morning when she went in to get him he was stark naked, no pjs no diaper nothing. Apparently, as he said, “his bum (diaper) was broken”

This one is going to make 2 a very, very long year.

Hey Pot, You're Paisley

As parents we strive to educate our children. Some of those skills we teach are academic; some are relationship based, while others are often life’s little lessons. In many cases those lessons are not taught, but picked up in our actions, our re-actions, our day-to-day living. In most cases we hope that our children are learning our better personality traits. If not we can always fall back on “Do as I say, not as I do” Which in my limited parenting experience is a piss-poor way of teaching.

But what happens when those learned lessons backfire. What happens when our children have learned from us, (in this case positive, affirmative lessons) and throw them back in our faces. Regardless of what we as parents want our children to do.

There is one argument that suggests that the children should still respect the wishes of the parent, and no matter what action the child wished to take, be it positive or not, we should respect the request of the parent. While this does have merit it clearly is in opposition to everything the child has been taught.

A second opinion is that the parent should understand that the child is a reflection of a lifetime of lessons, and thus should even if the parent does not want the child to act that way, should warmly embrace the child’s decision as a confirmation of good parenting.

For example, take a typical family, mother, father, (adult) son and (adult) daughter. Let’s place this family in a pre-Christmas discussion regarding gift giving. In this case the mother and father have lived a long life of frequently showing examples of generosity and compassion. In this scenario the children wish to purchase a gift for the parents. The parents reply to this saying that they need/nor want anything. Regardless of this, the children still insist on buying the gift, saying that the joy is in the thought of picking out the gift, the joy of giving. Clearly this goes against what the parents want, but at the same time it is clearly a perfect of example of the children having learned from the parents. How should the parents react? How should the children react?

Can the parents really enforce something that goes against a lifetime of learning? Oppose something that is so strongly ingrained in the children that it is akin to genetic conditioning. No answers from me, I only ask the questions not answer them.

There is an interesting side note to this discussion. Take the above scenario and apply to directly to the siblings. One sibling wants to give a gift, while the other sibling does not wish to receive it. There are no parent/child authority or respect guidelines. There are no clear-cut rules to follow. What happens in this case?

It would be somewhat ironic if this example ever came up in reality, where in one discussion the siblings were united against the parent, but in an identical discussion they were opposed.

In this case it is abundantly clear to me that the giving sibling is acting out of love, acting out of personal necessity. Yet, the receiving sibling, who in discussion with the parent was very outspoken about the joys of giving, struggles when found in the same situation.
It is never “do as I say”. It is do as I have lived my life. Do as I am when watched un-noticed. Do as I am when under stress, when busy, when angered. Do as I am when riding the crest of wave, or buried in the trough.

We are always reflections of those we love and admire, and even more importantly they are reflections of us. No matter how you try, what stances you take, how you swear at the mirror you cannot change the reflection that stands in front of you. It is better to gracefully accept what you are than waste energy trying to change that reflection.

A lesson learned

As I mentioned earlier I have moved into a different area in my professional career over the last year.  Recently I was asked to do another task that had less to do with Software and more to do with hardware.  Specifically I was asked to make a keyboard (computer keyboard) work with a piece of hardware.  Physically, the hardware had the correct connection points but nobody had hooked up the bits and pieces to make the software talk to it.  In my previous life as an application developer, all these bits and pieces are already provided for you by the Operating System. In the hardware world there is no OS so you have to convert the raw bits read from the hardware back into characters.  

So I started this 2 days ago, had the majority of my software written and talking to hardware within a couple of hours.  Then I spent the last 2 days trying to figure out why it was not reading the keyboard.  I peaked into every piece of code there was. I debugged, I searched, I peeked and poked memory structures, I watch variable, I even hooked a de-bugger up to the hardware and walked the code line by line. But there was no joy in Mudville.  2 days I have been chasing this freaking issue, yanking hair by the handful and really stressing out, as this was supposed to go into QA today.

Finally this morning I got desperate enough to swallow my pride and ask on of the old-timers to give me a hand looking through my code. He was gracious enough to agree and we spent 10 minutes looking at my code.  According to him it all looked ok (yeah me!!!) so he decided to walk into the lab and look at the hardware.  

This is where the story gets a little embarrassing, as he walks into the lab, opens the lid, and looks at the hardware and starts to chuckle. He looks at me and says, “you are missing the rs_422 to PS2 conversion chip (sic)” then points at the board.  Oh right I say, silly me….

Actually that was not my fault. The board was supposed to have the chip on it.  I should not have to verify that the hardware has all the parts it is supposed to. It was just very frustrating to bust my ass for 2 days, and then have it be something out of my control.

Bleh  stupid hardware, grommet, doo-hickey stuff.

Chicken Soup for the Father's Soul

I beat my children last night and it felt really, really good.  I even managed to lay down a few on my wife. That felt even better.  

I was merciless, they begged me stop, they pleaded with me to stop, but I kept up  my relentless assault. I hit their heads, their chests, their stomachs and legs.  At one point I even knocked the legs out from under my eldest and dropped him to the floor, following with a huge blow to his abdomen.  Age gave no mercy. I attacked the 7 year old as much as the 2 year old.

I am not sure how the pillows made out though.  Man did it feel so good to get into a full-fledged pillow fight with all three boys.  I whacked a lot of pent up aggression out on them.  An hour later the boys were sweaty, mostly naked (apparently pillow fighting must be done in your underwear) and exhausted.  I was feeling pretty good myself.

For future reference if your kids a frustrating you… trust me a good beating is great for your soul.

I am a Hockey Dad

I am a “Hockey Dad”.  The obscene electronic beeping of my watch has gone off in the pre-dawn hours of cold Canadian Saturday mornings for 6:00 am practices.  I have thrown back the covers and left the warm sanctuary of my bed and wife to stumble around trying to find my jeans and toque.  I have broken the cardinal rule and woken a sleeping child. I have order many a large black coffee and a small hot chocolate (diluted with milk please to cool it).

I do this because I am a hockey dad.  What I hope I never become is a ”hockey parent”.  You know the types, you read about them in the paper. They are the anti-poster children of Minor Hockey.  They are the ones whose children will defy the stats, join the NFL and vicariously fuel parental hockey fantasies.

I first noticed it during the sort-outs for my sons Novice league.  Novice as in 7 year olds who can generally skate, can generally pass the puck and can generally shoot., but not all at the same time.   It is during sort-outs that the kids are assigned to level A, B or C.  Woe is the parent whose child ends in level C (the shame of having a child that cannot skate).  To them the ultimate goal is the coveted A (competitive division).

A conversation I overheard during the sort-outs.

Father 1: “So I told Jimmy to make sure he was never the first in line for a drill.”
Father 2: “Right, so he can see the other kids make mistakes and learn th4e drill better.”

I felt shame, I had not told my son to do the same.

2 weeks ago our team played a game that ended in a close loss 7-6.  There was a very strong player for the other team that scored 6/7 of the goals.  One of the mothers on our team went on a rant about how that child should not be in B, How he had no business in B he should be in the A division.  I do have to admit that the child was a good player, and there is a very distinct possibility he might be A material.  However, I don’t think it donned on her that 4 of our goals were scored by our best player, who is also borderline A material.  Somehow his performance was lost on her.

During the sort-outs there was a B team that was very, very strong.  !0 goal leads were not unheard of.  The idea of the sort-outs is not just to rank the children, but also to balance the teams so that each team is balanced against the other.  After our game with them several of the coaches and parents went to the league coordinator commenting on the strength of the team. The reply they received was that the league was honoring personal request for travel requirements.  What that means is that the parents on that team want to have certain players together to make traveling to practices and games easier (ride-sharing).  This is a noble cause. The interesting part about it as that the coach of this particular hockey team also coached soccer this past summer. I also coached soccer this past summer.  His team also dominated the league last year, and oddity enough the same core 8 kids on his hockey team this year, were also on his soccer team.  A team that has been together and dominating the last 3 years.  So here we have the worst case, a hockey coach, that is also a “hockey parent”.

The funny thing is that this attitude is very contagious. At times I find myself fighting the urges to pressure Liam to perform better. To sign him up for the elite hockey camps.  In reality I know the best thing for him is to ensure that he is having fun so I resist.  









     

I Will Remember

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies  
Today I have an appointment. A most important and special appointment. I have set my watch; I will pause in the middle of a meeting. I will stop everything I am doing.

Today I will remember.

I will remember those that have paid the price physically.
I will remember those that have paid the price mentally.
I will remember those that have paid the price emotionally.

I will remember them for the world that I grew up in, I will remember them for the world that my children are growing up in. I will remember, for in that way I can say thank you for costs paid by my grandfather’s generation and for the cost paid for my generation and for the costs that future generations will have to pay.

To all those that have served and have loved those that have served, I thank you

Today I am a Man!

Well the definition of “man” in this case may be a tad stretched, but for all the geeks of the world I have become a “MAN”. As I mentioned above I am a software developer, specifically a java application developer.  I write application software, typically in the Java programming language to be run on top of existing computer operating systems. About a year ago I was having lunch with a close friend and part-time mentor of mine. At the time I mentioned how bored I was with my current job.  I was in the grind of the minutia, an area that I routinely struggle with. Let me design the system, I’ll let you take care of the little things. (Actually this can probably explain why my wife and I get along so well, she lives for minutia).   Anyway, my friend mentions that he has an opening at his company that I might be a good fit for.  He proceeded to convince me to stop y his office and see what they did. Then he proceeded to woo me.  As the ancient proverb goes, “be careful what you wish for”.

I decided that change might be exactly what the doctor ordered. I left the comfort of my own space and stepped in the brand new frontier of embedded programming and immediately floundered.  This stuff was way outside of my scope of knowledge.

So how does this in anyway relate to me becoming a man today?  Well today I successfully wrote data to hardware, and the hardware did not burst into flames and self-destruct.  Me… I wrote data. I pushed bits into hardware registers. I forced silicone and metal to do my bidding. I am god blah blah blah.

What does this mean exactly, what is the true scope of my accomplishment? Well here is my first analogy.  

Application programming is like baking a cake from a store bought box. Add a few ingredients, mix and bake.  Where as hardware programming is like making a cake from scratch  The problem is the analogy really doesn’t fit well. An application programmer, at least a good one, is not just assembling store bought components( at least sometimes they are not ).  

A better analogy is that hardware programming is like baking a cake,  where you first have to grind the wheat to make flour. You need to crush the cocoa beans by hand. Squeeze the vanilla pods yourself.  That is what hardware programming is like.

And today I did that.  I think it is now time for a beer.

.  

What is Love

I met my wife in Grade 9. She sat in front of me during English class. We conversed on occasion, the usual Gr. 9 stuff I am sure, can I borrow a pencil, what was your mark on the last assignment. Blah, blah, blah. Fate ensured that we saw each other on and off over the course of that first year. She sat behind me in math class, I no longer remember if it was Gr. 9 or 10.

Sometime in that first year she reached out and grabbed my heart firmly with her eyes and took possession of it. It would take me 5 more years to convince her that she did indeed have my heart and that it was a worthy object to hold. During the course of 5 years of high school education we moved through many phases in our relationship. I can recall countless episodes of my own puppy love. I can also recollect moments of deep respect, annoyance, anger and lust. Throughout those 5 years, for the most part, we remained good friends.

This February 6th I will have the distinct honour and privilege of having spent more of my life in a relationship with my wife than without. Feb 6th will mark the 18th anniversary of us being together as a couple (not married).

18 years we have been together, ½ of my lifetime. That is a big number. I am not sure if I truly understand the scope of that.

And after 18 years I can tell you that I still love her. I can write those words without flinching or pausing. The real question is what does it really mean to say/write/type those 3 little words.

We live busy lives, we both have professional careers, we are raising 3 sons, the boys are at an age where we are investing serious amounts of time into their activities (swimming, hockey, soccer, play group). We are also trying to balance individual time for each of us, with each of our children. Add on top of that cooking, cleaning, laundry and life maintenance. We each look for our own down time at the end of a given day. At the end of this, there is not much time left at the end of a day\week\month for “us”.

How does love survive these busy years, where the royal “us” is given the very lowest priority?

As part of trying to find time with each other we have cross-over interests. I am not much of a TV guy, and when I do watch TV, it is generally the “egg-head” channels watching specials on the Rise and Fall of the Byzantium Empire. My wife’s choices are either focused around the Home and Garden shows or some sitcoms. But to spend time with her last season I booked one night a week to watch the Amazing Race. She, on the other hand, has stepped into my world and will play World of Warcraft with me.

Last night was gaming night, we hook up with another married couple and a work friend to roam the Azeroth landscape righting wrongs and defeating evils. I do not recall hat lead to it, or what it was that we said, but at one point in the evening a comment was made. My wife and I both responded at the exact same time, with the exact same words in the exact same cadence. This was no monosyllabic grunt, but a full response to something that had been said. After we said it there was a brief pause and then laughter. The other married guy (only 2 years or so married) responded in a joking manner something to the effect “that was really weird, you guys have been around each other way to long”. My gut response to his comment; “no that wasn’t weird, that was love”.

So what is love? Sitting in a silent room together in perfect comfort without the need to force a conversation. Watching the patterns of ups and downs in your life perfectly mirrored to your spouse. To being able to respond in unison with the same answer, the same cadence and knowing that answer is right.

To be a Gamer

I mentioned in the “all about me part of this blog” that I am a gamer. To those who “game”, or to those who are “gamers”, they already know what I mean. However, there is a large portion of the population that does not recognize the term or recognize it in a negative light. What does it mean to be a “gamer”.

Well in a nutshell it means that I am a 35+ year-old married man and parent of 3 that plays video games. Not just plays them, but also has video games as a hobby.

There has been a lot of press over the last couple of years about the evils of video games. Video games are violent, video games are lulling the minds of our youth, and video games are police killer/psycho training simulators. If you believe the likes of Miami lawyer Jack Thompson, video games are the root of all evil in North America today. And at the root of that evil are the gamers.

Well you know what, I don’t buy it. In fact the same type of people who oppressed rock music in the 50’s or the literary works of Judy Bloom and JD Salinger are the ones fighting against today’s video games. I agree, there are some games that are exceptions. The Postal series, Grand Theft Auto and Vietnam all take violence over the edge. I have issues with these games, just like I have issues with extremely violent movies that show violence for no other reason than glorification of it.

But enough about that, I am going to be revisiting this topic a lot. The real reason of today’s post was to introduce Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade (PA) is a tri-weekly web comic that talks about gaming and other popular culture. This comic is not for everyone, the humour can often be juvenile and crass, and the site often has sexual innuendo and profanity. Not the type of site for every person out there. Me, I think they are quiet often very, very funny. At the bottom of the PA are the 2 founders and creators of the site, Gabe and Tycho. These guys are gamers; they also vocally defend the gaming pop-culture. Back a couple of years ago they were getting very tired of the negative press floating around about gamers and decided to do something about it. Living in Seattle they decided to raise some money and toys for the local Children’s Hospital. Items that the kids could use to help make the time spent in the hospital more enjoyable. Books, videos crayons, colouring books, and yes video games.

I remember back in 2003 when they started, a couple of posts about it on the website, the occasional plea to ask for a donation. I also remember when the first donations started to arrive from Amazon. What was expected to be several parcels turned out to be several truck loads. What was intended to be stored in a garage turned out to fill that garage floor to ceiling and top to bottom. Gabe and Tycho took photographs, and those pictures were amazing top me. I watched the progress day to day, and every day I was proud to be a part of this grass roots charity. Over all that first year, which was supposed to raise enough money for a couple of consoles and games raised over 250,000 in donations and toys.

Last year Gabe and Tycho expanded to 4 hospitals and tried again. Last year they anticipated a better response and acquired warehouse space for storage. Last year the ran out of space 3 times and had to move to a larger location for storage. Last year they raised close to1,000,000 dollars in toys and donations.

This year they are going worldwide. Children’s hospitals in Canada and Great Britain are now sponsored.

Do me a favour and check out the site, take 5 minutes to read the page and see what they are doing. http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

The Price of Marriage

“They” say that everything has a price. To be honest I believe that. At the very bottom level you pay a price for everything you want to do in life. You want that donut; pay the price on weight gain, or exercise. You want that new book from Chapters; something else does not get bought. Some things have very small prices; prices so trivial that the cost is negligible, others have such enormous costs associated with them that the straddle our backs for a great portion of our lives.

Marriage has a price. It is perhaps the penultimate example of give and take, or paying the price for what you want. Last Friday night my wife paid a terrible price for 17 years of commitment to our relationship. I vaguely recall somewhere in the back of my mind a couple of things we may have agreed to on our wedding day: through thick and thin, in good times and in bad. As I alluded to earlier, there is always a cost.

Friday night my wife booked a pedicure with a neighborhood friend. For over 3 hours the sipped wine, nibbled crackers and chatted, while having their feet washed, oiled, groomed and pampered. Being the most excellent husband I am I took the 3 boys out for the evening. I got lucky and my eldest was invited to a friend’s house. The younger 2 and myself hit the local mall to browse through the selection of Thomas the Tank Engine tracks.

Over the course of the night as we were wandering the boys mentioned they were thirsty. Since it was dad night I decided to treat them to one of those yogurty, fruit smoothie type drinks. We were close to Jooster Buice(name changed to protect the company), a store that specializes in nutritional drinks and the like. I picked up 2 small berry concoctions.

As we lounged around on some chairs in the mall having our drinks I sampled from each of the boys cups. Sip here, sip there… All in all I probably drank at least 1 full cup of berry smoothie stuff.

After we finished the drinks we packed up and headed home. Within 15 minutes my stomach was bothering me. I have had the feeling before, same sort of feeling if I drink apple juice first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I got home and did the bedtime routine, got all three boys teeth brushed, pj’d, pee’d, storied and tucked in. All while the foot worship continued down stairs.

By now my stomach was continuing to bother me, It had moved past pain to an almost nauseas state. This was a good hour after I had consumed the drink, so any acid like effects should have passed. I grabbed a glass of milk and some tums and went to chat with the ladies.

Originally it had been my intent to trade the foot worship Friday time for a bit of husband snuggle time(like I said, everything has a price), but by 9:30/10:00 things were not getting any better so I decided to leave the feet queens alone and head upstairs to bed. I was too uncomfortable to sleep, so I flicked on the TV and lay suffering.

Then the gurgling started. Bubbling, churning, boiling sounds coming from my nether regions. The discomfort increased proportionality to the sounds my digestive track was making. The pressure increased as the time passed. Now for the benefit of any readers with a delicate constitution I am now going to paraphrase what happened next.

The first few decompressions were immense, Mount St Helens volume eruptions. I was hoping that they were going to provide relief, but they were only foreshadowing.

By 11:00 the situation was dire and I had moved from the comfort of the bed, into the bathroom, traces of my presence still lingering in the air of the bedroom.

11:30 and the company had left and my wife wandered upstairs. I was trying to find a fetal position that I could maintain while perched on the toilet. A thin sheen of sweat covering all my skin. She walked into the bedroom and I think she may have retched a little.

She opened the window, offered me comfort through the closed door and bless her soul, actually crawled into bed.

12:00 pm. I have worn a trail in the carpet moving from the bed to the bathroom every 2-3 minutes. My beloved spouse having giggled her way through my discomfort finally bails on me, as I am making too much noise and keeping her awake. Too much noise; put the pieces together on that one.

Somewhere between 12:00 and 1:00 am the demons leave and I stumble into sleep.

Interesting point… Neither of the 2 younger boys showed the slightest reaction to the drinks at all… nothing, nada, zip.

Prices, everything has a price and I imagine my spouse having lived through a portion of that night some days wonders if the price may be too high.

The First Dance

The introductory post: I think every blog I have been to has one of these. What is it about blogs that makes a person feel the need to stand up here and justify who they are and why they are writing to an anonymous audience.

So here I am starting what I swore I would never do. Not that I recall actually swearing off doing this, but my constant mocking of my blogging friends is close enough to a line drawn in the sand that I feel like I should have sworn off it.

For now this blog will remain anonymous, by that I mean I am not going to tell any of my friends or colleagues or family about it. This is an experiment, a collection of my thoughts, both dealing with my life as a husband (12+ years married, 18+ years together), my life as a father (3 boys aged 7, 4 and 2 ), a software developer, an avid gamer and on occasion an attempt at some creative writing.

Who knows how long this is going to go on for.