Things have been busy at home with the renovation of the kitchen. Over the past month the kitchen has been destructed and reconstructed. We are probably a couple of weeks away from having a finished and usable kitchen again. The big shift was to knock down some walls and make doors where there were none. As a result we will have a big kitchen and no dining room (at least it is now integrated). We also no longer have a bathroom that doubles as the back door and can walk from our kitchen to our living room. Along with it we got better insulation, new windows, and replaced appliances. Like all home renovation projects it has a constant scope creep. I added the "we really should add speakers wired in the walls while the walls are open". The front door needing to be re-framed was added because it is slowly falling apart. Somehow landscaping the side yard got attached as a task because it is the right season to do it vs. spring. Painting the rest of the 1st floor got added because we had to hit the living room anyways. We didn't switch the whole house to base board heating although now it is on the radar or swap out all the windows on the first floor... both of which were considered when we thought about our antique radiators taking lots of room and the cold wind that blows through the house.

I had been thrust from sept 15th until the end of October on a mission to help work on a CTSA application as an advisor. I hadn't anticipated how much work it would be to do so but the good news is that the applications all shipped today so I now am a little relaxed given that the due date is done. Among the activities planned is my birthday (actually more Madeline's) this Saturday (a week early) where we are having "Curious Critters" come to entertain the kids, going out swing dancing (which will likely not happen on my birthday due to lack of babysitting), going out for Halloween (I have grown old enough to dread getting a costume), and a trip to Vegas with the boys the first few days of November (which conflicts with a key mgmt. meeting at my company and is causing trouble).

But all is well for now.

I feel like I have often been gruff and grumpy with people. Maybe that's my nature. It's something I can't change easily about myself. I am a critical person and see the flaws in things people do. I want them to be perfect and when they aren't I am disappointed. But it can become a problem with my grumpiness. In reading an article by the Virgin guy he seemed like a cheerful person all the time. He has optimism built into his world view. When thinking about employees not working out he said - just assign them to a job where they will be more productive. That is so optimistic and cheerful. So I am sorry for the many times I was gruff, short, grumpy this past year and the waves of discontent it may have set off in the world. I am especially sorry because I don't want to wallow in a world full of discontent and when I am polluting the air and it is a contagious disease I only make my own grumpiness worse. So I'll look to be more positive, agreeable, and fun in the next year.

I'll see how that goes?

I need to figure out better sleeping habits. I have gotten into the habit from all nighters or deep work days of not being able to sleep in the middle of the night. Instead I find myself awake trying to do something with my time from 2am to 5am every morning. Usually there is plenty of work but it leaves me tired. Maybe I can fix those sleep habits. I don't really know.

I need to get back to reading books. I have books and read the beginnings of them but then things come-up like work or televisions being on or kids wanting to play. Maybe it is impossible at this stage of life to read books. I may need the big entrepreneurial outcome to find the time. But it seems like there should always be time to read books and it is a habit that I have gotten out of.

I am not healthy enough. I haven't taken the time to regularly exercise. Sarah has done a great job of integrating exercise into her life but I have lagged. I tend to slip into bad eating habits of comfort food when I am stressed so I'll eat my deep dish pizza and grab a cookie with lunch because it looks calming. It's more bad habits. With all of these bad habits it will take a lot of work to change so I don't see much happening on that front. I might be able to get a little better with more commitment to exercise and enough stress reduction to make the better food choices.

I can't imagine stress will go away next year. I asked for it doing this start-up stuff. As we get to 50 people and beyond my paranoia has grown over the potentials for the major adverse business event with the scariest one being that we scale-up hires but the business we scaled-up was poorly forecast and doesn't occur... and then we need to lay off great people. I've been there before. It wasn't that bad but it also wasn't great either.

I wonder whether I am drifting or rowing in my boat. I feel like I am doing both at the same time. I am rowing as hard as I can but as I do there are grander currents in the water around me for which I have made choices long ago (getting married, having kids, starting a business) that create such a force that they are really what is determining my direction, who I am, and who I am becoming. So any rowing in a direction other than to support those things isn't going anywhere. So reflecting has some pointlessness to it. At some point in life I become what I have created out of my past decisions and only major deviating decisions that would nuke major parts of my life would make much change in who I am. I can try to be nicer/cheerful/positive. I can try to spend more time on one of the major areas. I can try to carve out time for things that are important but ignored. But there isn't infinite time and most time will be spent on habits and behaviors that have built-up. Momentum is strong for the status-quo and the next big changes will likely be the logical shifts in the topology of life - kids going to school and caring more about their friends than parents, work shifting into some new mode (acquisition or other), finances being better for travel and doing more exploration, a new friend, an old friend returning. Things will change then but I'll probably still be a bit grumpy.

I have this nightmare that I figured I'd document. It has recurred more than once so I am now used to it. In the dream I am driving a car on a highway. But at the same time I am driving the car by remote control. The "me" that I am conscious of is the one driving the car. I can see the car at first but then I am driving it remotely with no way to see what is happening to it because it has gone behind a hill. Since I am stationary it keeps getting further away. After a while I wonder how I can keep driving the car without seeing what it looks like from where the car is or being in the car itself. The car starts to swerve into traffic on the highway and eventually at a rapid speed flys off the highway. In this case I am aware that the crash was severe. It was fatal. The me in the car had died. But the me driving the car while feeling a terrible pit in my stomach for having died is still alive. So I walk about and think about how I am still alive although I have died. I go into a town and speak to some people. The can see me and I can see them and we are therefore all ghosts/spirits of people who have died. The town is not special or heavenly. We talk and I realize that I have been wrong my whole life about death. That people can live beyond their own death in spirit. I see that there is this other next world that is not much different from this one. And if I were to die in that world there would be more and more universes that I could pass through as a controller of myself through remote control. I awoke a little confused but remembered that there was a world or two that I was living in my dream.

I don't need to analyze this dream much. It underlies the typical fears of a father and an entrepreneur. Much of what I try to do is not fully under my control. My children will be what they will be and my business is in the hands of employees and customers more than it is in mine. As things go forwards the feelings of control that come from youth slip away the more I work to establish situations that I can control. In the end I am like the remote controller trying to drive fast cars. I need to let the driver drive their own car. If I can't see what it looks like from the car it will crash.

Why are the colors of the rainbow red-orange-yellow-green-blue?
If a lion is in a cage then will it be sad?
What do lions eat? A: Meat
Are our insides made out of meat?
Why do bees have stingers?
Will a bee like it if I leave honey for it on the ground?
Why is lava hot?
Why are moths attracted to light?

I was able to handle most of them but I was definitely stumped by the moth question

But what if there are other viruses that impact children at the same developmental ages as Polio and Measles and they are ones that aren't near lethal or obvious? These viral infections of other viruses may be causal to autism by also affecting the CNS. I can hypothesize that the virus, if one existed, should be findable within a stable population with a clear autism diagnosis (non genetic) that has been hard to explain with pure genetics by looking for linkage between antibodies to a new or poorly characterized childhood virus and autism.

So I did a quick search on autism and viral causes and found something new and interesting. There is new information announced in October Nature and through NCI about a retro virus called XMRV being implicated in an adult disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. CFS is a CNS disease where the patient is very lethargic because of some neurological issue. The potential that a virus causes the disorder is very interesting in it's potential to be similar to how polio and measles can reach and compromise CNS functions. Furthermore there have already been people who have linked CFS with autism in terms of treatment strategies and pathologies.

David Kirby reported in the Huffington Post on some forward thinking thoughts about links to autism from the researchers studying the linkage between XMRV and CFS in that there was a preliminary study and thoughts about how XMRV might operate in children with the phenotype of autism as well as some theories around viral activation when the immune system is operating in response to immunizations.

In all I find this line of inquiry of interest because it does lead to some rational outcomes and actions if the answer is that there are mechanisms by which autism and related disorders can be caused by a virus. Mainly that the viral infection can be tested for, possibly treated in a manner similar to HIV with anti-retroviral agents, and that a vaccine can be created to prevent new infections in the population, maybe there are genetic biomarkers that confer susceptibility or liability to the infection mechanisms causing certain damage and tests can help determine risk. This is all speculative but the speculation seems less off base with a little evidence.

Now, the young entrepreneur is dabbling in the creation of a reality television show that melds two of his dreams: professional wrestling and beautiful women. He spends all his time promoting the project called "Wrestlicious."

I too dream of "professional wrestling and beautiful women" but this does not sound like a great use of capital.

Among the big developments over the past week - Madeline has learned enough confidence to jump into the water and try to swim to me without a life jacket. It is a lot of flailing and always eventually requires a rescue but it classifies as swimming so I feel like some major new milestone has been reached.

There is this awful unfortunate nature to the Internet and public broadcast of thoughts relating to the work / private life mix. I generally don't want to have to adulterate my private lifestyle in order to be perceived the right way in my work. But there is no easy way to avoid someone who is looking (not that there are that many folks) at my bio from a work perspective from quickly switching gears into looking in the content I write about my home life and thoughts about it. So being in a role where I might be judged (sales, marketing, consulting) there are risks to communicating about my life. So I have resorted to mainly flowing pictures through Flickr about the kids. It isn't quite as fulfilling or cathartic as writing out a full set of thoughts and sharing them with those friends interested in reading but it seems safe provided I appropriately delete pictures that might be considered to be a poor choice to be shared. Maybe as I get older I'll go back to caring less and having more time to think and write.

Anyways - My twitter name is "danhousman". I'll probably get into it for a while and then move on to the next thing.

BTW: The final winning piece of advice came from the following gentleman..

"With Turbo Tax Online, you can't delete it, but you can work around it. I went back to Federal and filled in some mumbo jumbo for the information for my non-existent rental property, and then when I was done, I clicked on "revisit" in the rental income section, and then deleted the property. I then filed my Federal. After that, I went back and created a rental property, and just wrote something like:
Property type: I have no rental property. Turbo Tax won't let me delete this form
Address: No rental property
City: None
State: MA
Zip: 00000."

As long as I didn't say I had any income from the property, no rental income form appeared in my state taxes to file, so it looks like MA is just going to see zero income from rental property and no worksheet or form or anything.

"
I have the same problem and i havent filed my federal yet--my federal shows correct info and I am also unable to delete schedule E-1 I don't show a delete form selection anywhere
( Posted 02/16/09 06:04 PM ,Views by community 98 )
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fzhu99 commented same problem to delete a form for MA Schedule E-1!!!!!!
Poor software!!!
No answer ????
( Posted 03/16/09 03:24 PM ,Views by community 45 )
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Ben78 commented I have the same damn problem
( Posted 03/31/09 08:41 AM ,Views by community 23 )
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E30 commented I have the same exact problem! Their software is messed up! And I call turbotax people and they are clue less as to what to do! And I already paid them too!
( Posted 04/05/09 12:40 PM ,Views by community 18 )
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Jeremywh commented I'm having the same issue as well. I could delete the E-1 form on my Federal Taxes, but that didn't delete it on my State taxes.
( Posted yesterday 10:18 PM ,Views by community 4 )
"

Passover seder number one was a good experience this year. Zachary wasn't ready to wait through the whole seder. He did use his limited vocabulary to communicate his thoughts on the pace of the seder by repeatedly saying "Awww Done" once he was done eating his pretzels and yogurt. A friend of the family brought their two kids who are the same age as Zach and Madeline. It took the 3 year olds a couple of hours but then they discovered there was a person they could play with to accomplish tasks like dueling with trash can lids.

My dad brought a copy of a graduate student haggadah which added some good humor for us MIT folks. My favorite part was about the hiding of the centrifuge rotors.

I seem to have been abandoning my web site slowly for the lures of the social networks. I put little updates into Facebook for my status and load all my photos onto Flickr. It begs the question of why I need my own web site but there is this lack of a home base on the Internet so maybe I should get back to this site and start blogging again. Zach is sleeping through the night. Madeline is too although she mysteriously appears next to me when I awake each night. As long as I am not overcomitted at work I ought to have some hours to sleep each night and that must mean I am near the level of time to be able to jot down some thoughts.