mashby | The personal blog of Michael Ashby

August 11, 2003

Catholicism Is Cool

Buddy Christ Yesterday at Mass, I was reminded why I decided to become a Catholic – the discord.

I was born Baptist and then migrated to Methodist when I was in my teens. I was baptized Methodist but I never felt like I had found a home. Throughout my high school and college years, I explored other churches and even took a few religion classes that explored Eastern religions as well. Throughout my little journey, I kept an open mind and enjoyed the process immensely.

As an example, I met with Jehovah’s Witnesses every Tuesday afternoon for a year and a half. I never went to their church and I never believed their beliefs, but I did enjoy discussing it with them and trying to figure out why they believed what they believed. I think I wore them out, but it was fun!

Then I met Holly. She was a “cradle Catholic,” also the Music Director at Christ The King and she invited me to hear something that her Choir had worked on. Up until then, I bought into a lot of the stereotypes. You know, that Catholics have a lot of kids, don’t practice birth control, belonged an antiquated church structure and everyone does whatever the Pope says. I hadn’t really been to many Catholic churches and didn’t know much about them, so I went to learn more.

August 10, 2003

A New Leaf Begins With A Shiny Sink

My Shiny Sink You may have noticed that it’s been awhile since I’ve made a post. The reason is that I’ve been focusing on straightening out some kinks in my life. I’m not going to go into all the gory details, but suffice to say that 2003 has been a bit of a hectic and crazy year.

There has been too much on my plate and I haven’t been dealing with it well. So I began about a month or more ago to focus and re-think on everything that I’m involved in and how I should be handling my affairs. I’m now on the downhill side of this process and I’m starting to see some positive results, which is encouraging. What helped me get over the hump and on the “downhill” side was something rather surprising and unexpected.

I was sharing my experiences with some friends of mine in the Palm OS User Council. We were chatting in IRC and I mentioned some of what I was doing. Jennifer Shelamer made the comment that if I was looking to get organized, I need to take a peek at FlyLady.net. Greg Gaub chimed in and said that he highly recommended the site as well. I had never heard of the thing and had no idea what it was about, but figured I’d go check it out.

July 17, 2003

Clean Bill And A Long Night

3AM I took Gracie to the vet yesterday morning and she got a clean bill of health! The vet’s best guess is that she is mostly Cocker Spaniel and perhaps a little Shih Tzu due to the shape of her face and hair pattern, but it’s all a guess anyway. The vet also guessed her age at about 3 months and that she’d probably reach a final weight of around 20 lbs. Right now she ways 7.3 lbs.

She now has her first round of shots, an application of Frontline and a follow up appointment in three weeks. She’s been an absolute joy to have in the house and she has such a great disposition. While I worked yesterday, she slept at my feet and didn’t make a peep. Oh how I have missed having a dog! The only negative was that she started whining and scratching at the door at 3:15am this morning. Until she’s integrated with the rest of our pets (4 cats), we’re keeping her in the downstairs bathroom when we go to bed. So when she started making noise, I woke up and I took her for a walk outside.

When she was done I put her back in the bathroom, but it wasn’t long before she was whining again. I tried to ignore her and let her get it out of her system and go back to sleep, but after 5 minutes, I just couldn’t hold out any longer. I walked back downstairs and let her out. I slept the rest of the night on the couch with her and she couldn’t have been happier. Small price to pay to have her in my life. 🙂

July 15, 2003

Say Good Morning Gracie

Say Goodmorning Gracie I have been wanting a dog for many years. Back when Holly and I were dating, 10 years ago, she found a little kitten and adopted it as her own and since then I’ve been on deck as it were, waiting for a dog. It’s not that Holly’s not a dog person, it’s just that sometimes you put off things and it just takes you a little longer than you anticipated. After that first little kitten, 3 more found us over time and so we’ve had our hands full and we just shelved the idea of getting a dog for awhile.

About a year or so ago, I started making plans to get a dog. I love our cats, but I was ready for a dog. So, like most men would do, I bought a few magazines and books on the subject and began researching what kind of dog was right for me. That’s the thing with choosing a pet versus having one show up on your doorstep, it becomes much harder choosing the “right” dog. I think I made it harder on myself because I began thinking of the old addage that a dog and it’s master begin to look alike. That was certainly true last night watching American Chopper and seeing Paul Sr. with his Bull Mastiff. With that in mind, all my thoughts have been on finding a cool dog. I want a dog like I envision myself to be, not what I’m truly like. I’m just glad there’s no such thing as a couch potato dog. 😉

So today I arrive at one of my client sites nice and early and I’m greeted by a furry little puppy. They have a large home office and it seems that they found this dog last week and it’s been making the rounds throughout the neighborhood in search of a home. The thing is, I had seen this dog before. A few weeks back, as I was leaving this client’s office, I saw a small puppy playing with some children at the corner of the street. I was instantly struck by how cute the dog was and almost stopped to ask, but I was in a hurry and just kept driving. My first thought when I saw the puppy, was “this is the same dog!”

July 9, 2003

I’m A Dirty Dirty Boy

PigPen Having a pool is both a blessing and a curse. When everything is clean and working properly it is an absolute joy. It’s one of those moments where you think to yourself this is the good life. However, when your pool is not working properly, or when it’s dirty it’s an absolute nightmare. It sometimes feels that it’s more a curse than a blessing.

That was definitely the case last year. I just couldn’t keep the darn thing clean. I would have everything balanced one day only to have the water turn murky the next. I tested the water every weekend at Pool and Spa depot and every weekend I was having do invoke some voodoo chemical ceremony to try and bring the water back. “Take this phRise and put it in a pillow case and drag it through the water. But don’t touch it or it’ll burn you.” I’m not kidding, that was just one of the many weird things I had to do last year. Unfortunately, none of the things I did had any real long term solution and when it was time to winterize the pool, I just gave up. I cried uncle and let the pool water slide into decay and decomposition.

Cleaning out the pool this year was a bit of a journey, as such, I created a Travelogue (edit: deleted) for it. It was simply too long to try and post here. To read all the gory details, please select this link (edit: deleted). There is also a photo gallery (edit: deleted) that goes along with it. Warning, these photos are pretty nasty. 🙂

July 8, 2003

Life As A Weblog

The Emperor's New Clothes Having a weblog is kind of weird. It changes how you look at your life and what you do in your life. As you participate in various activities, or as funny and stupid things happen to you, you find yourself stepping back and taking a look at what’s happening. You become a third person observing your own life. You evaluate what’s happening and think “should I post that on my weblog?”

I minored in creative writing in college and I had a similar feeling during that time as well. Everything I did, or saw could be used in a short story, poem or song that I was writing at the time.

I remember the first day in my first short story course. The professor said, “If you took this class because you like to read, you need to drop this class now. This course will change how you look at what you read.” In a nutshell, he was saying that we were going to peek behind the curtain and find out all the “tricks of the trade.” Once you’ve done that, it’s almost impossible to go back and blindly enjoy a good book. One of changes that the professor said would happen is that we’d develop this 3rd person perspective on our lives and that’s exactly what happened. It’s been awhile since I had that perspective, but its back with a vengeance since I started this weblog.

July 8, 2003

Getting Back On The Wagon

I don’t know how it happened, but I have not been doing much in the way of exercise at all for the past few months. Well, with all the progress that I’ve been making in getting caught up with work and life in general, it was time to get back in the gym.

Holly and I had choir rehearsal at 7:00pm, so when we got out at 8:00pm we headed straight to the Harding Place Family YMCA. We had never been to this location, so it took a little orienting to figure out what we could do. All in all, it’s a very nice facility albeit a little smaller than the Maryland Farms location.

I did 20 minutes on the treadmill and then a series of weight machines for my legs. When I said I was ready to go, Holly tried to delay me by asking me to do some sit ups. It was on an incline bench and without even thinking about it, I just jumped on it and did 10. I was dying at the high elevation it was set at, so I lowered it down to a very small incline and did 10 more.

Overall it felt pretty good considering that it has been over 2 months since I’ve been in the gym. I’m guessing that it’s been all the manual labor that I’ve been doing on the weekends. 🙂

June 29, 2003

Hi, I’m Troy McClure

Troy McClure I wear a lot of hats these days and normally I don’t think about it much. Sure I have three different business cards, but rarely does it dawn on me what that means because rarely am I wearing all three hats at once.

Well, a few days ago, I was over at the PalmGear offices meeting with a few folks. As is usually the case when I’m there, I get introduced to other people that I haven’t met yet (the place is really hopping). That’s when it gets a little confusing. First off, I’m most known there as the guy who runs InterPUG. Not that that is a big deal or anything, just that’s how I’m normally introduced. However, I normally bring up that I also run NPUG because these guys live in Nashville, so I’d love for them to come to our meetings – not as PalmGear employees per se, but just as fellow Palm OS enthusiasts. Then if any of the folks I meet are in their IT department, I usually bring up the fact that I run a small IT consulting firm, because I’d love to support their Intranet. There’s even an occasion or two where I’ve brought up the Palm OS User Council, so you might imagine how confusing it is when it’s time to beam someone my business card. 😛

June 26, 2003

Nomad Computing

Nomad Computing For the past week or so, you may have noticed that many of my posts have dealt with Wi-Fi and Internet HotSpots. The reason for this sudden interest in this topic is because I’ve been trying to work more frequently out of my home office. The reason is simple – there are too many distractions working out of my home and I simply need a change of pace. Since I can’t quite afford an office at the moment, my only other alternative has been to use local area HotSpots. A good friend of mine, Dan Royea, calls this “nomad computing.” 🙂

Now that I’ve found a few reliable HotSpots, this type of mobile office is working fairly well. I’ve noticed that my productivity has been much higher and coupled with the new tools that I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I’m starting to get on top of my piles. That’s not to say that this type of situation is idyllic. You have no control over your environment, so you have to roll with the punches a bit. For example, as I write this, I’m sitting in Bongo Java and they are playing some really crappy music. I’m open to all forms of music and can listen to just about anything, but this stuff really sucks. Luckily I have a pair of small headphones and I can turn on Massinova or SomaFM to help drown out the noise and listen to something I like.

June 23, 2003

Getting Pucked

After my late afternoon coffee siesta on Friday a few weeks back, Holly showed up to hook up for dinner. Originally we were thinking about going to a little Greek cafe that was nearby, but as we sat there in dimming sun, relaxed and content, we noticed that there was a new restaurant right across the way. It was a Wolfgang Puck Express.

I had eaten at one a month or so ago in the Chicago O’ Hare airport and found it to be quite good, so with that recommendation Holly and I decided to at least go look at the menu. A few glances at the menu and it was clear that we were going to eat dinner there. There were simply too many good dishes to pass up.

The part of town that Wolfgang Puck Express is located is fairly trendy and we expected the look and feel of the restaurant to be in that same vein. It was, but as soon as we stepped into the restaurant it was like stepping into a funky little wrinkle in time. I instantly felt off center and I couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t until we were sitting down, waiting for our food, that I started to piece it together. Wolfgang Puck has combined a wide array of dining “experiences” into one experience and then cranked up the speed.