This Blog and You

Last Day of Summer 2025

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:06:00 +0000

Happy September 22, 2025!

I had some relatively lofty notions about what I might write for this post. Some of the ideas I considered involved waxing sentimental (an increasingly easy posture for me these days) about a leaf or a bug or a cow or something, or possibly contributing my exceedingly valuable insights to the socio-political travails that bedevil our fair culture, or maybe even complaining about the fact that I turned 40 years of age with very little warning.

Instead, I'm going to write something short, boring, and maybe half a measure ironic: I miss blogging. Not necessarily my own blogging, but I miss that halcyon moment in time during the earlier reaches of web 2.0 when the principal method of engaging with the nascent scene of social media was to write an essay of some sort. Of course, it's very much the provenance of the elderly to reflect fondly on the less potent technologies of their youth and ponder only its joys and none of its drawbacks, but I don't mind playing into stereotypes every now and then.

When I was an undergraduate, there was a cohort of friends and acquaintances who populated an unofficial webring of hobbyist authors who would jot down their poems, essays, insights, and half-remembered histories into the simple but able platforms of Blogger, Xanga, and MySpace. Reading a new post felt a bit like an event, similar to how receiving a much-anticipated periodical in the mail probably still feels to some of the old souls out there.

Social media now is way better, of course. That is to say, its usage is more streamlined and its effects more inescapable. To consider for too long how a tool that allows us to stay connected with loved ones across the globe is more famously used to insult strangers and sell lies is to cast a furtive glance into the abyss. The problem with old folks like me bemoaning the inexorable march of technology is that it invites the classic question, where would you draw the line? Where would you tell technology, "Here you may go, but no farther"?

Anyway. God loves you and so do I. I hope your summer was good but I love the fall.

This Blog and You is 20 years old, I think.

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer 2024

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 22:28:00 +0000

I was out walking past sundown the other day, thinking about how mid-September may be the most naturally splendid time of year for central Indiana. The mornings are bright and crisp while the evenings still cling lovingly to the fading summertime warmth and this temperate majesty is framed perfectly by the gently yellowing leaves which presage the coming autumn. The few leaves which had already made the brave transition from the twigs of their birth to the tender embrace of the forest floor crunched satisfyingly as I slowly made my way to a clearing on the top of the hill. As I drew nearer, something caught my eye; there was a small, ethereal light, gently pulsing and dancing around the trees and briars. It was a firefly, one of the tiny marvels of these Indiana woods. When I was a kid, it was a point of excitement to spot the first firefly of the year; it was like an unofficial dye marker that summer had arrived.

As it happens, I am a kid no longer but I still feel that same twinge of glee whenever I spy the first telltale glow of the season, dancing around the trees and briars. What’s changed is that I never used to spare much thought to the last firefly of the season but now I find that I experience a pang of sympathy when I see a lone specimen out glowing in the woods in mid-September. So far as the science hippies have been able to tell, fireflies use their bioluminescence primarily as a means of communication and to attract a mate. Seeing one by itself so late in the season brings to mind a kind of tragic beauty; whether it represented a life lived long and full or just a bit of a late bloomer, the pale, vacillating light is a plea in the dark, a supplication to be seen and engaged by a peer who understands you. Whether you’re in the twilight of your days or only beginning to recognize your place in the world around you, there’s probably something about that yearning that rings familiar.

Speaking of just starting out in the world, my wife and I welcomed wolf-baby #3 into our home and into our hearts this past July. In terms of drama, his delivery probably ranks between those of his brother and sister. Of course his brother, born in July five years ago, arrived in a pre-Covid world where there were no real restrictions on guests which meant that there were many celebrants on hand the magnify the joy of the occasion. That, along with the near exsanguination of his mother, heightened the sense of moment for the arrival of our firstborn.

Our sweet daughter was born under quite different circumstances in February 2022 when Covid restrictions were still high and the only guests to come by to say hello were friends of my wife who worked at the hospital. In terms of medical drama, there was none; everything proceeded according to plan and recovery time (though never trivial) was within the expected parameters. The limitations on visitors coupled with the cold of February made the whole affair feel somewhat lonely. In some ways, the birth of our firstborn seems to occupy a place in my memory that would suggest that it somehow was more recent than the birth of our daughter. This makes a certain amount of sense of course, given that the events of those few days in 2019 were so fearfully trialsome therefore memorable.

Our third plate appearance in the child-farming game came almost exactly five years after it began. Delivery was just about textbook as one might hope, with Ashley discussing her recent win/loss record with a fellow chess enthusiast there in the operating room. Later, as the child and mother rested comfortably in their suite, I went for a short stroll about the maternity ward floor. I walked by the rooms in which we were sequestered for our previous two visits, remembering how the nurse’s station was situated relative to our first room and the nursery. If you’ll forgive me a sophomoric simile, the unfolding of time is a bit like taking a walk down an OR corridor in the maternity ward. Yes, you can look backward but you’re only allowed to walk in one direction. Anyway, sorry about that; these types of half-baked, florid observations seem to be increasing in volume if not quality as I age.

Speaking of diminishing quality, it’s occasionally said by authors that there is no such thing as good writing, only good editing. Since I don’t expect to edit this too much, I apologize for what I’m sure is a rather low-quality piece of prose. Not sure what else to write about at the moment so I may just leave it there. Though there’s no reason to take me seriously when I say such a thing, I do wish that I found it within myself to write more. It’s just that my new hobby (sitting, staring at the wall, wishing I had the energy to brush my teeth and go to bed) is taking up so much of my time.

Anyway, happy last day of summer. I hope it’s a good year for you.

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 13:05:00 +0000

“Thank God we are not young.”

One of the few exultations in popular or cinematic media on the depletion of youth is found in the 1974 academy award winner, Murder on the Orient Express. In the scene in question, the eccentric detective Hercule Poirot is conversing with his friend Signor Bianchi when the latter remarks on the hazards of passion concomitant among those still in the flower of life. In response, Poirot smiles and delivers that memorable line.

Youthfulness and vibrancy are quite often regarded as some of the ultimate currencies in this life and of course it makes sense that it should be so. Perhaps most obviously, when you are young, you have much more of your life ahead of you, at least actuarially. Furthermore, you are more likely to feel better, look better, and exhibit more joie de vivre in your pursuits. Also, you are more likely to be rich in friends and many of the burdens of responsibility that life will ultimately bestow upon you have yet to manifest. As I said, the broad societal regard for youthfulness is not difficult to understand and messages reaffirming its primacy in our culture are all over the place if one cares to look. It is not necessarily my purpose to undermine or denigrate the estate of the young, but rather to advance the notion that its lessening (or indeed, its absence) in one’s life is under-celebrated.

This past month I observed the conclusion of my thirty-eighth year. Thirty-eight is not typically regarded as any sort of birthday milestone but to my thinking it is the first year wherein it is wholly indefensible to describe yourself as “in your mid-30’s”. While that probably sounds like a pretty tenuous claim to youthfulness on its own merits, it was one of the few that remained to me so its disapplication felt just a bit more meaningful than it should have.

Another noteworthy occurrence of the past month is that my family and I moved into our new home! For close to five years now, my wife and I have discussed the possibility of building a house on a piece of land quite near my parents along the outskirts of beautiful downtown Fortville. As the story goes, the land was originally acquired by an ancestor of mine nearly a century ago. There are photographs of my grandpa playing on the property as a little boy and it’s moving to watch my own little boy toddle along the same paths and climb the same rocks that I see in those pictures.

Before I end this maudlin edition of The Last Day of Summer, let’s take a moment to articulate one or two things that might be recommended about not being young. Well, it’s often said that time seems to hasten as we age. Days melt into weeks and months and years so quickly that sometimes we can hardly account for all the time that has gone. Still and all, we ourselves are not going faster. This disparity allows certain patterns in life to take shape before our very eyes and while it is bittersweet to see time disappear, it is beautiful to see things blossom. As a child (and even as a young man) I was always looking forward to what might come next. As a near-dead 38-year-old, my ability to appreciate the present is much improved.

Another benefit that comes with years of experience is that while our delights and enthusiasms may narrow, they also deepen. I theorize that with age, the joys that we take for ourselves either melt away to near nothingness or become altogether more meaningful to us. New friends are wonderful but old friends are precious. Learning new skills is edifying but mastering already developed skills is praiseworthy.

Other news: the Rugby World Cup is going on in France right now. This is the fifth RWC to which I’ve paid attention and the first one since 2007 wherein there is a more than reasonable chance that a northern hemisphere team might take home the Webb Ellis Cup. Erin go Bragh!

My wife and I are going to a wedding this evening in Asheville, North Carolina. Now that weddings are not so common feature on our calendar, I find that I appreciate them more than ever.

Regards,

-Ryan

A Good Man

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 21:30:00 +0000

Yesterday the world lost a good man. Doctor D, a professor of biology at my alma mater, passed away after bravely contending with cancer for two years. Curiously, D and I met after I had graduated rather than in one of his classes. The pastor of the church that I attended at the time knew that D and I shared an interest in the confluence of faith and science and he recommended that we get connected. I will always be grateful for that recommendation.

D had done a fair bit of world traveling while still in his minority: he was born in Rome, spent much of his adolescence in Africa, and was educated in America. For all his globetrotting and lofty credentials, he settled for a relatively modest professoriate at a tiny little college in a sleepy midwestern rustbucket. One of the many things that I learned from D is that being satisfied with the vicissitudes in life begins with being satisfied with yourself. D was a man of deep faith and formidable intellect and was quite used to being the smartest person in the room (unless of course his wife happened to be home). Like me, D was just a wee bit of a daydreamer and I think that he liked to project himself onto some of his favorite figures from fiction: maybe one part Father Brown, two parts Indiana Jones, and just a smattering of James Bond for flavor.

I met D a few weeks after the episode that revealed the cancerous tumor that he carried in his body. I will always remember the bravery that he demonstrated when the seriousness of his condition was fully articulated. Even in that bleak moment, his thoughts were of his wife and children and how he would have preferred to love and care for them all for many more years. Well now his race is fully run as we say, and it’s for those of us that remain to do the loving and the caring.

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer 2022

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 20:26:00 +0000

Many years ago (it feels like a lifetime ago) when I graduated from the Ball State ICS program, I took a job at my undergraduate alma mater as a systems analyst. It was my first full-time job and of course I had a world to learn yet about being a professional technologist but one of the distinctives about working for a small liberal arts college is that often resources are so scant that you’ll find yourself entrusted with responsibilities that are significantly beyond what you’d expect in other places of employment. This can be a tremendous boon in terms of getting valuable experience rather quickly, but the obvious downside is that, as a novice IT worker, you may face challenges that overmatch you.

I wasn’t in the job for more a few months when I was conscripted as the system administrator for the school’s primary online learning software, Moodle. It’s worth noting that this all occurred before online learning resources played such a top-to-bottom role in education, but it was still a highly critical role to be filled by someone with virtually no administrative experience. As it happened, I wasn’t in the role very long at all when my inexperience proved costly.

Early one morning I rolled out of bed to run a scheduled update on the SuSE Linux server that hosted our Moodle installation. Groggy from want of sleep, I fumbled with my computer to connect to the school’s VPN, fire up the console app, and Telnet into the Linux box. For those of who have been in administration positions over technologies with a wide userbase, you’ll know that the reason for performing updates at an inconvenient hour is to minimize the impact that you’ll have on active sessions while the system is unavailable. For those of you who have worked with Unix-like command line interfaces before, you’ll know that running a shutdown and reboot command looks something like this: shutdown -r . In retrospect, I must have omitted the “-r” argument which indicates that the system should come back up once it has finished shutting down because after running the final command of the update script the Moodle server went down and stayed down.

Now very much awake and in a state of panic, I hurriedly got dressed, gathered my essentials and made the half an hour commute to the campus. I ran to the server room as quickly as I could and turned the server back on with a push of a button. It was now about 7:00 AM. “Whew!” thought I, “No harm done!” After all, Moodle had been down for less than an hour at a time when most of the student body would have surely been asleep. Perhaps nobody even noticed that the site was unavailable?

All throughout the day my boss received emails from inquisitive professors who said that their students were claiming that that they were unable to submit homework because Moodle had been unavailable that morning. The students were angry, the professors were angry, and I think my boss was somewhat displeased as well. While this all amounted to a rather unpleasant few days for me, it was indeed a valuable learning experience and I have reflected on it several times in the intervening years. On balance, I think I would still say that this early hiccup still represents the most acutely stressful episode of my professional life but early last fall a strong contender manifested from the ether.

On October 11, 2021, I began my first day’s labor with a new employer. I had nominally been hired to fill the role of “Director of IT” but I was made to understand that for the near-to-mid future my obligations would effectively be those of a senior software engineer. Still, when you are operating as a member of a very small team, it is common to be called on to handle functions that do not fall neatly within your core responsibilities.

It was in just this fashion I was advised that my employer’s promotional site, the one that sits on the company's top-level domain, needed a little updating ahead of a significant marketing campaign. The site was purportedly a simple WordPress affair and the requested changes seemed fairly modest: the profile of the previous Director of IT was to be removed along with the publish dates of a few testimonials. Given the limited scope of my brief and WordPress’ reputation for being relatively beginner-friendly, I was not overly concerned about being able to effect the desired updates but the hard-won lessons of failure and mishap have compelled me to be cautious even in the face of near-certain success. With this in mind, I purposed to commit no changes to the site upon my first login; I would just verify that the credentials I’d found in the Excel document on the PC that I’d inherited were correct and then I’d watch a lengthy video on WordPress administration.

My initial efforts were not exactly met with unadulterated success because while the login credentials in the aforementioned Excel document ultimately did prove to be correct, the link to the admin portal was not. A cursory internet search advised me as to some of the more likely locations for the admin login screen and one of them turned out to be accurate. Once I was logged in, I clicked around just enough to find out where the testimonials page was, always being very careful to not alter any of the settings. Once I had found the testimonials, I noticed that there was an enticing red button that read “EDIT” in bold, sesame letters in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. “I may as well take a look at the editing screen” I reasoned, still committed to the prospect of not actually saving any changes until I’d become better acquainted with WordPress generally.

With only mild trepidation, I clicked the edit button and the testimonials page remained much the same, save for a few more controls popping up on the sides and bottom of the screen. I right-clicked on the article date of one (which was to be removed since it had become a bit… dated) and a context menu popped up offering to, among other things, delete the selected object. I clicked ahead and deleted the indicated text just to get an idea for how the testimonial icon would look without it. I thought that it looked just fine, but it occurred to me that I should compare it side-by-side with the live site so I fired up a different browser and navigated to the promotional site once again. I clicked on the testimonials page and was greeted by the familiar header of “What People Are Saying” followed by… nothing.

A slight sting of panic shot through me as I noted that the very page I was in the middle of editing on one browser was displaying a big hole where content had formerly been on the other. I thought that perhaps having that page open in the editor had perhaps “locked” the content such that it wasn’t currently viewable and so perhaps closing out of the editor would restore the testimonials. I backed out of the editor on the one browser and then refreshed the page on the other browser. No improvement; the testimonials were still obstinately non-extant.

I hastily re-opened the page editor only to find that the testimonials were all missing from there as well. This was particularly baffling because, as I mentioned, I had just deleted a single date from the page, not all the dates and certainly not the articles themselves. It was at about this time that I regarded one of the buttons on the side of the editor menu that read “RESTORE”. That seemed relevant at the time, so I clicked it and up popped a few different modification dates from which to choose, none of which were recent. It seemed to me that what the situation demanded was action over certainty, so I clicked the most recent restore date and was then prompted with an ominous alert box that read “Are you sure you want to make this change?” I hadn’t recalled being asked about my certainty when I evidently deleted an entire page’s worth of content but I tried not to let that bother me as I clicked “Yes.”

Very unsurprisingly (for longtime readers of This Blog and You), restoring the earlier save point for that page did little to improve things so I had to think of other possible solutions. As a personal confession, I might mention that when it comes to software development, I have a bit of a hacker inclination. To be clear, that’s not “hacker” as in “Let’s hack into the FBI database” that’s “hacker” as in “I don’t know how to do this the right way so let’s try to hack it together some other way.” Given that inclination and given the strong instruction received from Professor Miller back in the Intro to Internet Algorithms class I had taken nearly 20 years prior, I figured I could paste in some raw HTML and CSS that might look better than the gaping hole that currently dominated the testimonials page.

At the close of business that day, all my efforts had redounded to a mountain of stress and slightly degraded testimonials page. The HTML/CSS hack had worked somewhat and though it was clearly worse than what preceded it, I had no choice but to call it quits for the day and my wife and I were hosting a social function in our home later that evening.

At said social function, my ordinarily unparalleled hosting prowess was blunted somewhat by my preoccupation with how to undo the damage that I’d visited upon the company’s promotional site. My guess was that my boss had not yet checked on the page to verify that the requested work had been done and I was not looking forward to explaining how I’d so badly bungled my very first assignment. To be frank, I was not even sure that I knew how I’d bungled it. All I knew was that I’d opened the WordPress editor and the page’s contents just vanished. Wistfully, I reflected that if only I had left some browser tabs open of the page as it existed before I’d modified it, I could just recreate the contents and styling from the code rendered on that page.

Just then, inspiration struck! I excused myself to the computer room and quickly conducted a Google search for the company’s testimonials page whereupon I clicked the three vertical dots to the right of the first result and then clicked on “Cached.” Eureka! The unborked testimonials page was there in all its pristine glory, implying (if not promising) a path forward for restoration.

Feeling much better about my prospects of overall success, I rejoined the party and enjoyed myself for the rest of the evening.

The next day, I strolled purposefully into my office, fired up my state-of-the-art computational device, and repeated the steps from the previous evening. Disappointingly, I found that the Google caching routine was more proactive than I would’ve guessed: the cached version of the page now reflected the same brokenness that the live page exhibited. I felt my heart sink into my stomach. I quickly tried a few other search engines (as well as the Wayback Machine) only to find that none of them were suitable for the task at hand. Just then, as I veered toward the precipice of despair, it occurred to me that I had left the Google cache tab from last night open on my home computer. I quickly drove home, hoping that the contents of that tab was still intact and that it wouldn’t try to reload when I clicked on it. Of course, it would make for a more dramatic (or more tedious?) story if the tab indeed had reloaded but mercifully it did not. The intact testimonials page was still pulled up from which I was able to get the code I needed to recreate the required testimonials (sans the publishing dates).

It was at this juncture that I recalled that I had also been tasked with removing the previous Director of IT’s profile from the site. The stakes were a bit higher with this change since the employee profiles sat on the main page and any corruption of that page would be immediately obvious by anyone visiting the site. Because I am such a formidably clever boy, I first opened a dozen tabs of the company site so that I would have ample failsafe measures in place should I have to recreate the entire page out of whole cloth HTML. After I had done that I once again logged into the admin portal and gingerly navigated my way to the employee profiles section. With my brow sweaty and hand trembling, I once again clicked the now foreboding “EDIT” button. I glanced around at the ensuing edit screen and scrolled up and down, ascertaining the location of all the constituent elements. Then, without so much as clicking a single button, I opened yet another tab and navigated to the company site only to discover that, comically enough, it was now completely blank. “I didn’t even do anything!” I remember audibly shouting at my monitor before remembering that it likely didn’t care.

This was real pretty pickle. Yes, I did have the open tabs of the home page from which I could, with time, reconstitute the now-corrupted home page. The main issue with that (aside from the unseemly amount of work that it represented) was that someone would most certainly visit the home page before I had finished restoring it and not owning up to my own bungling was job #1 as far as I was concerned.

This blog post is running real long and I’m not sure that it’s that interesting of story to begin with, so here’s the Reader’s Digest version: I found in our Azure portal (we deploy and host our apps in Azure) a nightly backup routine from which I was able to restore the site in its entirety. Did that discovery undercut the Herculean exploits involved in restoring the testimonials page? Yes, certainly. Incidentally, I later pieced together that the editor we were using on our WordPress site was corrupted and upon opening it automatically injected the page with its own CSS class which had the presumably unintended consequence of hiding everything.

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So it’s another Last Day of Summer and a beautiful one at that! The past year has truly been wonderful. In February, we celebrated the arrival of our second bundle of joy and happily, her arrival did not precipitate in the near exsanguination of my wife. Being a parent of two is actually enormously fun right now, if you don’t factor in the debilitating sleep loss. I, for one, am looking forward to autumn with exceptional keenness this year. I would also like to write on here a little bit more than once a year but writing is hard and it takes altogether too long for an undisciplined chap such as myself. Speaking of which, please forgive the many typos and writing errors that I’m sure have made their way into the preceding paragraphs; I didn’t proofread it at all.

Keep your stick on the ice,

-Ryan Wolfgang

Last Day of Summer 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 15:28:00 +0000

Since I have only submitted one post per year since 2017, I have looked at the “Last Day of Summer” series as an opportunity for a bit of reflection. I used to consider the last day of summer to essentially be the last day before classes began in the fall but I have been neither student nor instructor for quite a while and so I’m reduced to looking up “autumnal equinox” each year.

Now for something completely different: way back in the days when I was still an officially enrolled student of an institution of higher education, it was fashionable for young men of a particular strain of evangelical Protestantism to read the book Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. Longtime readers of This Blog and You may possibly recall that I wrote briefly about my experience of reading that book and that even way back then I still felt as though I ought to poke gentle fun at it as a means of obfuscating my endorsement in the eyes of those who may not like it. What I did not mention in that post was that I also read Captivating, the corollary written by John’s wife Stasi Eldredge which was aimed at female readers. Having read Captivating was fairly mockable in and of itself and my motivation for doing so would certainly not have done anything to help me save face with my peers at the time: I read it to impress a girl.

As I recall, the girl in question was insufficiently impressed to justify the effort and all I was left with was the shameful memory of having unsuccessfully attempted literary espionage. Mostly what I recall about Captivating was that the author seemed to associate any undesirable development or character flaw in a woman’s life with a corresponding failure on the part of her father to have been a good dad. While it’s difficult to imagine that you could find many serious thinkers who would object to the notion that a bad father will often have deleterious effects on his children, the idea that all shortcomings in a woman’s life are the reverberations of parental missteps by her father is, at best, an oversimplification. It’s important for me to keep reminding myself of this because my wife and I learned recently that come this February, we will be blessed with the arrival of a little girl. We’re over the moon of course and I’m especially pleased that we have a representative from both chromosomal configurations just as we hit replacement-level fertility but as someone who makes missteps both parental and otherwise, I am hanging onto the hope that despite the blunders my children will no doubt have to endure, they’ll emerge not too much worse for the experience.

In other news, I am changing jobs next month. I have seen several headlines that suggest professional churn is at an all-time high right now and I have never felt more apart of the zeitgeist. A chief complaint featured in many of these resignations is that the employee desires more flexibility in his or her work life. In this aspect I suppose I am somewhat distinctive because I am unquestionably headed from an environment which features greater flexibility to one that will feature less.

Somewhat related: I have never used an email signature. You know that little block of text that features your name, company, and job title that’s appended to the end of most professional emails? I’ve never, ever had one. I think I’m going to use one at this new job to see if my life gets observably better.

Have a happy last day of summer.

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 18:34:00 +0000

Happy Last Day of Summer 2020 (pat. pending)! By broad considerations, 2020 has been a strange and unenviable year, but in the particularized context of my family life, I find that I have few complaints. All the predictable joys of watching a two-month-old grow into a fourteen-month-old have visited my house and I have greeted them all with growing gladness of heart. Of course, there is a bitterness that accompanies the sweetness of seeing your child reach new stages of development and that bitterness comes from knowing that once a stage is outgrown, it will never again be revisited.

I remember rejoicing when Levi learned to crawl but then it dawned on me that I could no longer simply set him on a blanket and walk away to some other task, fully confident that when I returned I would find him unmoved from where I laid him down. It wasn’t long ago that he took his first uncertain steps that were without the aid of some stabilizing implement. To help steady himself, he would keep both of his hands raised straight up into the air as though he were trying to scare off some predator by pretending to be bigger than he actually was. That particular stage, adorable though it was, only lasted a few days. Now he happily toddles along his way, arms occasionally outstretched toward his quarry but otherwise swinging casually at his sides.

So parenting is pretty fun so far, I’d have to say.

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Regarding the year of 2020 through a more national (and global) lens, there are reasons to be a little less joyful. In our fair land we are seeing increasingly vulgarized political rhetoric emerging from all corners, racial tensions are sitting an elevation I can’t recall ever seeing before, our western seaboard is reeling from punishing forest fires, and of course all that is couched amidst a backdrop of a global pandemic which, even after so many months, still seems to defy lasting medical consensus. Unquestionably, for folks looking for a reason to despair, it’s a buyer’s market.

Still, I take a bit of irrational solace in the view that, as bad as all of these many woes truly are, they are not the sort of challenges to which human progress (and the American people in particular) is a stranger. It may not be an encouraging comparison, but the late 1960’s also featured a lot of the social pressures that I identified in the previous paragraph. There was a pandemic (the Hong Kong flu) that killed millions of people worldwide, the radical organization called Weather Underground was bombing government buildings, marches and demonstrations protesting both the Vietnam War and racial injustice were features of college campuses and metropolitan areas all across the country, and a general sense of malaise and purposelessness seemed to drape over the nation like a pall.

“But Ryan,” you might say, “the late 1960’s sucked. Why do you take solace in comparing our current moment in time to then?” You know, that’s a good point. I suppose I don’t know why other than to note that all those travails combined did not wind up spelling the end of our republic and so there’s reason to be optimistic that we aren’t on a one-way track bound for ever worsening social strains. On the other hand, if you were to consider the last 10,000 years of human history, you would find scores of kings, emperors, warlords, and chieftains while democratic republics would pop up on the scene only in the last few hundred years and only spottily even then. My point is, we don’t really have a preponderance evidence to suggest that these non-monarchical systems of government are especially durable in the grand scheme of things and so we might do well to take care of it as best we’re able. That said, I tend not to believe that any permutation of elected officials (especially those promised to be on offer this November) will wind up immanentizing the eschaton. Rather, the surer way of introducing warmth into our various communities and boroughs is by being kind to our neighbors. For sure, that method of advocacy has a pretty limited footprint and you may never see effects of your labor reflected in the larger society, but I would also say that in comparison with some other method of political involvement, you’re a lot less likely to regret your efforts in the fullness of time.

If you’re still reading this as blog with its once-a-year postings, I hope that you had a nice summer. I also hope that things look up for the rest of your year.

Regards,

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer 2019

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 12:54:00 +0000

It is commonly known that a person’s blood sugar level has a big impact on how that person feels on a moment-to-moment basis. Perhaps a little less commonly known is that how you feel at the time of taking in nourishment can have a big impact on how your food and drink taste to you. According to a 2006 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, taste sensation is rendered by a more complex neurological process than the straightforward interpretation of sweet, salty, and bitter notes. In other words, being happy can actually make your food taste better!

2019 has been a wild year so far. Around the end of 2018 my wife (Ashbash) had the pleasure of informing me that she was with child. Though the wee life blossoming in her womb had not yet fingers, toes, nor eyes, I soon perceived that I had developed a strong paternal affection toward the scarcely realized being. I also noticed that my regard for my wife, already formidably strong, was even further heightened as I observed the discipline with which she had begun caring for our unborn progeny.

The months went on and on and we learned that we were expecting a boy whom we’d call Levi. As the time for Levi’s emancipation from his uterine confines drew near, we formulated a bit of an exit strategy for him, which involved Ashbash checking into the hospital on July 25th, a full two days before the newly estimated arrival date. The plan was for her to get prepped Thursday night and begin a pitocin drip early Friday morning, with the expectation that delivery would likely happen by early Saturday morning. The reason for this approach was that Ash’s OB was on call during that window of time and we preferred to go through the process with her familiar presence rather than that of a stranger.

From my perspective as a know-nothing bystander, all seemed to be going swimingly by the time I said goodnight to Ashbash and headed home. I arrived back at our hospital room early the next morning and was rebuffed for what would not be the last time in my offer to bring food and drink from an outside vendor for Ashley’s consumption. The doctor indicated that she was pleased with how Ashley had responded to the preparatory measures taken the night before and that we could proceed with additional steps. “Additional steps,” in this case, means beginning the pitocin drip and, eventually, administering the epidural.

Now if I might digress very slightly, I feel like this is just as good a time as any to mention that of all the distasteful imagery to which I was cruelly subjected during our pregnancy classes earlier this summer, the video of the epidural administration was probably the most psychologically damaging to me. This is saying quite a bit, when you consider that the lion’s share of the media presented in those classes was mercilessly clinical footage of wailing mothers producing equally traumatized little monsters out of their bodies. That also did not make my recommended summer viewing list.

Anyway, once the pitocin drip had been initiated, my wife and I began the waiting game. Actually, waiting game(s) would be a bit more accurate as we indulged in cards, board games, and computer games to our hearts’ content throughout the morning and into the noontide. The pitocin drip had been configured to administer a modest volume at first and Ashley reported that she was not yet feeling any strong contractions and our OB confirmed that her dilation had not significantly increased. At this juncture, our OB gave the go-ahead for the pitocin to be increased and for the epidural to administered. This is significant because, in addition to being a horrifying procedure to behold, it also marked the end of Ashley’s in-hospital mobility because the epidural (as advertised) greatly reduces your neurological sensitivity below the waist and effectively knocks out your command of your legs.

Speaking of losing command of things, my command of the exact timeline of the day is a little less than precise, but I do recall that Ashley’s mother had arrived sometime prior to the pitocin increase (perhaps it was about 11:00 AM). She proved to be an invaluable resource throughout our entire hospital stay, providing her daughter with dearly needed solidarity and providing me with dearly needed whatever I wanted to eat. The three of us continued to wile away the hours with cards, books, conversation, and, in my case at least, just kind of sitting around. Ashley’s contractions, while noticeably increased in both frequency and intensity, hadn’t developed into the sort of strong rhythm that tends to accompany imminent delivery. Our OB, who had been monitoring all our progress as well as Levi’s vital signs, registered some minor disappointment at how slowly things seemed to be shaping up and indicated that an even stronger pitocin drip should be administered.

Afternoon gave way to evening, as it is wont to do, and evening gave way to night. It’s not the easiest thing to sleep in a hospital room, of course, as everything either blinks or beeps. Furthermore, in an effort to encourage Levi to nestle further down in the escape hatch, attendants came in every half an hour (seriously) to rotate Ashley in her bed like a hot dog in a gas station. This must have been an uncomfortable procedure because Ashley yelped in pain every time she was so handled, which as you might imagine, greatly impaired my ability to get a good night’s sleep. By the time the morning’s light put an end to our pretensions of slumber, our OB hit us with an ultimatum: she was about to go off duty and Ashley was still nowhere near sufficiently dilated for a conventional birth. If we opted to go with a delivery via c-section right then, our OB would stick around and perform the procedure. If we chose to wait for further dilation to occur, our OB was going home. If we’d only known then what the rest of the day held in store, we would have for sure taken our OB up on her offer. But we both were of the mind that, as long as Levi’s vitals were strong, we’d wait it out and try for a conventional delivery.

And wait we did. Ashley, who had almost certainly not slept at all during the previous night (to say nothing of having slept poorly for the previous two weeks), was running frightfully low on energy and strength after a full day and a half of labor. By early afternoon, after our new doctor confirmed that Ashley had dilated very little throughout the day, the c-section approach was sounding better and better. Once we finally relented and scheduled the procedure, yet another stricture was placed on Ashley: she was no longer allowed to take in nourishment orally. It was a fairly pathetic thing to behold; though the fluids being introduced to her system intravenously guaranteed that dehydration would not occur, they did nothing to quench the perishing thirst that Ashley developed throughout the afternoon. Pursuant to that, she would meekly ask for a small drink of water every now and then like the parish boy in a Charles Dickens novel and I had the unpleasant duty of either refusing her or sneaking her an ice chip which she savored with pitiable relish.

At approximately 5:00 PM, I was jumpsuited and seated next to my wife’s head which, like the rest of her, was lying on an operating table underneath bright surgery lights. I had been advised that there would be a curtain partition that would run across Ashley’s collarbone, thereby sparing those on the head side of the curtain from the grisly visual of a perforated abdomen. What I had not counted on, however, was just how short the curtain was. When I commented on the curtain's limited obfuscating ability, one of the surgery attendants asked if I would like it raised. I chose to perceive this offer as an affront to my manliness and so I declined, hoping that perhaps I would ultimately prove equal to the level of gore tolerance that I was evincing rather than feeling.

Happily, my groundless bravado was shown not to be too far afield as, for whatever reason, I didn't even get close to passing out which I understand is not an unheard of phenomenon amongst fathers of c-section babies. Ashley continued to impress me by asking insightful questions all throughout the procedure, even demanding to know why she couldn’t hear Levi crying at the exact moment he was pulled from her womb. Levi, for his part, was an utter champion. From the moment his greasy, grumpy face emerged from the bloody shopping bag that had been the only home he’d ever known, I was completely sold on him. I have heard it said that it’s quite common to not feel an emotional bond with a baby in the first few months because the child doesn’t respond to your stimulus in a way that feels at all relational. Be that as it may, I felt a very strong connection with the wee babe pretty much instantly. That said, there’s no denying that just born babies are horrifying monsters and I wouldn’t necessarily say that Levi was much of an exception to that. However, once all the vernix had been scrubbed off of him and he opened his eyes a little bit, I guess you could say he was kind of cute.

Not long after delivery we were all back in our maternity room with both Ashley and my parents on hand to share in our celebrating. Things were good. Levi was healthy and whole, Ashley was resting comfortably at long last, and we were surrounded by family members who loved and supported us well. It was about half an hour after the surgery before there was any evidence that something suboptimal was afoot. Prior to the c-section, Ashley had been advised that the goal was for her not to exceed a 3 or a 4 on the 10-point pain scale at any point during her hospital stay, including during the c-section itself. To that end, a very powerful anesthetic had been administered to Ashley immediately preceding the operation which was to last her for about two hours. Despite this, Ashley reported to her nurse that her pain was hovering between 3 and 4 and requested further anesthetic more than an hour before she was predicted to need it. Some fifteen minutes later our nurse had failed to reappear with the requested medication and Ashley’s discomfort had spilled outside its acceptable boundaries and was advancing to the 5-6 range. Having already had quite enough of seeing my wife in physical distress, I volunteered to try to locate our nurse and get some answers. I walked to the attendant’s desk where I found our nurse, an industry veteran of more than 30 years, folded over her workstation crying. Not considering this a very encouraging sign, I asked her what was the matter and she informed me that the doctor who had performed the c-section had not correctly recorded Ashley’s anesthetic prescription and that she had gone to dinner immediately following the surgery. Since there was a two-person authentication process required to get access to medication, there was no immediate way for our nurse to get the appropriate painkillers that Ashley so obviously required.

I returned with the unwelcome news to Ashley who, though disappointed, seemed to have the understanding of an industry fellow who recognizes a lamentable but common professional hazard. Thankfully, another doctor on the floor was deputized to facilitate the prescription of painkillers just a few minutes later and Ashley’s discomfort was once again wrestled down to a manageable level. According to the anesthetist, the painkillers that Ashley was receiving were rated to deliver pain relief for more than an hour. Imagine our concern when, not fifteen minutes later, Ashley reported that her pain levels were once again spiking out of control. Again the meds were administered and again Ashley’s discomfort was abated. This apparent resistance to pain medication gave our nurse some cause for concern and she indicated that she wanted to inspect Ashley’s incision site.

Whenever some intimate inspection needed to take place, all the visitors in the room were usually asked to step out to a waiting room nearby until the inspection was finished. At this point, my parents had said their goodbyes and Ashley’s parents were preparing to do the same but they decided they would stick around until after this latest inspection was completed. Once the room was clear of visitors, the nurse pulled back Ashley’s bed sheets to reveal that she was sitting in a pool of her own blood. To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that the sheets were simply stained red, I mean that there was an alarmingly large pool of standing blood in which my wife had been lying. Our nurse was taken aback by this discovery and sought out the doctor that she had earlier deputized to our cause and get his input on the situation. To my dismay, this doctor, who resembled a grossly wizened Ichabod Crane (and inspired all the confidence thereof), simply advised further monitoring and bade the nurse alert him if the bleeding continued.

It was very shortly after this that the doctor who had performed the surgery returned from her dinner and checked in on Ashley. The doctor observed the pool of blood and opined that Ashley’s uterus, exhausted from its nearly two-day labor, had failed to contract after delivery which would normally staunch the bleeding that naturally occurs with the separation of the placenta. In an effort to coax the uterus to return to its proper contacted state, the doctor began performing a “fundal massage” which is 1.) not as relaxing as it sounds 2.) enormously painful. Everytime the doctor pushed on Ashley’s abdomen, a fresh spurt of blood was added to the pool and Ashley cried out in pain. Though it’s small of me to focus over much on my own travails during this period, I might mention that this prolonged exposure to the sight of Ashley in agony was doing a number on me mentally.

After the doctor was finished with the fundal massage, she addressed Ashley and advised her of what her options were. She indicated that she (Ashley) could go to the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) but that if she did so she would be separated from Levi because the ICU is not a sterile environment. The doctor recommended that Ashley stay in the maternity unit because “We know how to care for mothers up here.” The doctor had scarcely finished explaining Ashley’s options to her before Ashley, whose face was already deathly pale from blood loss, started writhing on her bed and exclaiming “Oh, I feel strange! Oh, I feel so strange!” It was at that moment that several things started to happen at once. The doctor ordered an ICU contingent to prepare a room for Ashley and the nurses started preparing the bed for movement. There were urgent commands being shouted, shufflings around, and Ashley’s moaning above it all. I decided that it might be a fine time to have a little “me” time so I retreated to the room’s lavatory and had a bit of a breakdown. I grabbed the towel rack on the wall to steady myself as I doubled over with weeping. It occurred to me that I should pray but the only words that I seemed to be able to conjure were “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” All I knew was that I wanted God to be and that I wanted God to do.

Once all had been made ready to transfer Ashley to the ICU, I was told that I could follow the bed down to the ICU but that I could not follow the bed directly to Ashley’s unit. So, like a climactic scene in a Hallmark movie, I stayed with Ashley as long as I could until I was told I could go no further. I was joined a few minutes later by Ashley’s parents who, if you’ll recall, had imagined that they were being asked to leave their daughter’s room for a roughly ten minute procedure. It had been more than an hour. We were left to comfort each other and to engage in our various pacings, supplications, and thousand-yard stares for the next half an hour. Eventually we were found by a doctor who apprised us of Ashley’s condition. I think the doctor correctly perceived that most mentally present of the three of us was Ashley’s father so she directed most of her explanations to him. Much to my dismay, he responded with terrifying questions of his own such as, “How can you be sure she’s not bleeding internally?”, “Will you have to remove her uterus?”, and “Will she have brain damage?” Even if I had been at the peak of my mental powers, I don’t think it would have occurred to me to ask questions like that.

Once all the dreadful questions had been answered and Ashley had been stabilized, I was permitted to go back to her room in the ICU. She looked up when I entered the room and smiled weakly, stretching out her hand to take hold of mine. I noted with significant relief that she had a blood IV connected to her arm and that she was not quite so pale as when last I had seen her. Some minutes later, we were joined by her parents and eventually mine as well and there was much rejoicing. The rejoicing part was fine, so far as it goes, but Ashley was incredibly tired and in need of as much rest as the noisy and uncomfortable ICU could afford so we shooed the folks out and went to sleep.

The next morning I awoke to find my father in law already occupying the hallway outside my wife’s room. He wished me a very good morning and indicated that his wife had breakfast for me up in our room in the maternity ward which sounded absolutely amazing as far as I was concerned and it turns out I was absolutely correct because in addition to the breakfast being as delicious as I’d hoped, Ashley’s mother had decorated our room with flowers and balloons and that sort of thing. I had the good sense to think of one more decoration that might add to the joyful atmosphere: that baby that got yanked out of Ashley the previous day. I collected Levi from the nursery and waited for his mother to join us all in maternity room.

Once Ashley finally arrived and we’d cheered and celebrated anew, Ashley’s mother announced that she had some gifts us both. “Over the coming few months, Levi will be receiving all kinds of gifts and we wanted to get you two something just for you.” I seem to recall that Ashley received some kind of generally unremarkable and probably near-worthless necklace. My gift, on the other hand, was of a tantalizingly rectangular shape and of a very suggestive heft. I shook the package slightly and gasped! Could it be!? I tore away the wrapping and my fondest hopes were confirmed: I had received a bottle of Booker’s 2018-02 Batch Straight Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey! Booker’s, for those of you who don’t know, is a label that was introduced by the Jim Beam distillery back in 1988 and was one of the first “barrel proof” bourbons to be made widely available. Even though it was only just noon, I immediately felt impelled to inquire, “Does anybody want to try some with me?” Once I had finished pouring, I held up my glass took a deep sniff, instantly being rewarded with scents of caramel, oak, vanilla and cinnamon. I turned my attention to my wife and child, both resting happily in the bed to my left. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt such contentment, such peace and happiness. I put the celebratory beverage to my lips and pulled in a small sip. It was, I do avow, the best bourbon I have ever tasted or ever expect to taste.

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Rugby World Cup 2019 is underway! I watched the opening ceremony and the first game which featured Russia v. Japan. Watching the Russians try to muddle their way through their own national anthem was hilarious.

I am currently in Zion National Park with my father and brother and we are about to embark on the storied "Angel's Landing" hike.

Happy Last Day of Summer.

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer 2018

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Sun, 23 Sep 2018 02:01:00 +0000

Bust-a-move is a puzzle arcade game in which two adorable iguana-like characters operate a marble-launching trebuchet to try to halt the advance of an ever-growing stalactite of baubles. It plays a bit like a game of reverse Tetris but instead of stacking distinctive shapes, you just match colors. Connect three or more marbles of the same color and away they fall.

Were you to rewind about two months you would find me prostrate in the middle of a lake in northern Kentucky, reflecting to myself, “Get the marbles… Get the marbles… Get the marbles…” and making small circular motions with my forearms as though I were one of the pudgy iguanas in Bust-a-move and I was dutybound to reload my trebuchet. Now why, you may wonder, would I have been so preoccupied with pantomiming the whimsical antics of a reptilian arcade sprite whilst I was in immediate danger of drowning? Funny you should ask. You see, I had been knocked temporarily senseless by being slammed face-first into the water at high velocity while botching a very simple directional change on a wakeboard. This particular type of mishap is known in the water surface sports community as “catching an edge.”

Speaking of violent failures, I spent the last day of summer in 2018 doing the least summery thing that there is: going to a college football game. A few years ago, my brother-in-law and I decided that it would be fun to make a trip to the University of Michigan’s “Big House” and that whenever his beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers came into town, we’d pull the trigger and buy the tickets. Given that Nebraska was 0-2 for the first time since 1957, neither my bro-in-law nor I were realistically expecting a victorious outcome, but then again, neither were we expecting the litany of ineptitude that led the Huskers to a 56-10 blowout loss.

I hope you all had wonderful summers. Here’s to a beautiful fall.

-Ryan

Labor Dabor Day 2018

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 03:27:00 +0000

Well, it's been a year. Whoopsy.

About two weeks ago I was walking around the campus of my undergraduate alma mater, enjoying the lingering warmth of the late summer sunset. Since having moved to Indianapolis last year, I find that I make my way back to Anderson at ever lengthening intervals. I had always imagined that whenever I finally up and left Anderson I would miss it very much and, to my surprise, that hasn't really been the case; a least not in the way I had expected.

As you might guess, the community surrounding the university is in a perpetual state of flux with people coming and going while only a remnant remains constant from year to year. For more than ten years, I was part of the group that stayed. Every time someone from the community graduated, took a new job, or married someone from far away, it felt like a mild betrayal when they finally moved away. Of course I knew this was a silly thing to take personally, especially as the occupational, academic, and marital prospects of the greater Anderson area continued to shrink. I figured that when it was eventually my turn to leave I would be a bit wistful but also a bit relieved that it was me doing the leaving rather than me being left again. As it happens, I was right; abandoning people is the best.

Anyway, like I was saying, I was walking around the Anderson University campus when I spied a familiar piece of sporting equipment languishing in a brush pile. What you see in the image below is scrum sled, an apparatus similar to the blocking sled used in football practice. For all of my rugby playing career and most of my coaching career, a scrum sled was an unobtainable pipe dream; something we would dearly love to have but of which we had little expectation. Well, in the fall of 2012, we finally got one. One of our players knew of a nearby high school program that had no further need of it, and so it came to jolly ol’ AU, where I saw it put to use for just a season and a half. Now it is used by no one. Like a poem by William Carlos Williams.

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer: 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 03:59:00 +0000

First the obvious: the last day of summer 2017 was September 22 according to the calendar, so why the title? Well, my "Last Day of Summer" series (LDoS) is no respecter of calendars, that's for sure. LDoS posts tend to arrive when I feel that the seasonal milieu of summertime has been terminated for the year. In the past, this delimitation has been chiefly marked by the beginning of classes but this year it just means that my in-laws took me out on their boat for what I imagine is the last time this year.

If these first few months of marriage have taught me anything (and they have not), it's that Wolfgangs are not built for water sports. My wife's family has been trying to teach me how to wakeboard and I fancy it's a bit like trying to teach a potato how to wakeboard. One of the more valuable things I learned on this most recent outing is that, if you have the choice, it is much better to fall backwards rather than forwards. There's all kinds of vulnerabilities around front.

This is my approach to learning new skills:
1.) Learn new thing
2.) Become exactly one level more proficient at thing than you were before you'd learned thing
3.) Get excited about thing
4.) Research thing to get an idea of how long it would take to become world's best at thing
5.) Get discouraged
6.) Watch Foghorn Leghorn clips instead
7.) Never again attempt to improve ability to do thing

Unrelated: the following exchange took place between me and a Kroger cashier this evening:
Me: [placing three items on conveyor belt] "Good evening; I don't need a bag for these things."
Cashier: [smile shifts from professional to uncomprehending] "We... we have bags."
M: "Yes, I'll just carry them without a bag."
C: [gesturing to bin under checkout desk] "We have paper bags..."
M: "No thanks; I'm perfectly happy to just carry them."
C: [eyeing me uncertainly] "... I'm just going to set them here." [puts items in (plastic) bag, sets bag on counter]
M: "... Thank you."

P.S. Apologies, Labor Dabor Day, I had a blog post idea for you, but I forgot it.

-Ryan

Mammal Oreo Day 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Wed, 31 May 2017 20:44:00 +0000

For many reasons, this past Memorial Day was especially significant to me. Of course, it was my first Memorial Day as a married man, but it was also the first Memorial Day that I celebrated by eating a few mammal Oreos (white chocolate-covered Oreos with gummi bears on top).

For the first time in ten years, Whiskey Day (May 27th) passed me by without my notice. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

Also on Memorial Day, I got the first speeding ticket of my life. Also my second.

One more, and it’s legally considered a “spree.”

-Ryan

Sauna or Later

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Thu, 11 May 2017 20:36:00 +0000

These days I like to begin my gym visits with a few minutes’ stretching in the sauna. I’ve found it to be the most efficient way to warm the muscles and joints before exercising. However, I’ve found that if I stay in too long the heat actually begins to sap my energy and, more generally, my will to live.

Yesterday I pretty much finished my sauna routine and was about to exit when a familiar face smiled back at me through the glass door. “Thumper,” a good-natured, rascally gentleman who likes to make friends wherever he can and talk to them just a wee bit longer than they’d like, strolled into the sauna and enthusiastically greeted me.

“How’s the wedding planning!? Coming up soon, isn’t it?” he squawked.

I responded smilingly, hoping against hope that I could effect a graceful exit to the conversation quickly.

“Getting married is just the best thing you’ll ever do! Having a companion to go through life with you makes everything better. Did I ever tell you about my wedding reception!?”

I assured him that he indeed had, but I must not have been very convincing because he proceeded to re-share his wedding anecdotes with gleeful self-amusement. As he went on, I reflected on the fact that I was getting a frightful thirst so I began slowly creeping my way toward the exit so as to tacitly suggest I couldn’t stay a moment longer. “Say, what do you do for work?” Thumper asked abruptly, making me realize that I hadn’t heard a word he’d been saying. Delirious from dehydration, I stammered something about software development and Thumper once again took off on a tirade of enthusiastic insights. “This is it.” I thought feverishly. “This is how I die.”

Thumper had finally wrapped up his musings about the auto manufacturing business when decided I wanted to live and made a reach for the door. My greasy mitts had no sooner made contact with the handle when Thumper reached up his hand in protest and said, “Now listen, there’s something I want to tell you before you go!” “Is it that you sent here by the arch-fiend?” I theorized. “Now if I don’t see you before your wedding, just enjoy yourself a lot. This is the best thing you’re ever going to do, trust me.” I was genuinely moved by the sincerity in his face and I paused for just a moment before I thanked him for his kind words. I then slithered out the door and managed to pull myself to a nearby faucet from which I drank greedily. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, sweaty as can be and red as hatred. I frowned. “That old man just tried to kill me.”

Wedding in T-2! Second time I’ve had to miss the European Rugby Championship because of a wedding. Or will I?

-Ryan

Casimir Pulaski Day 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 21:57:00 +0000

Though I try my best to be a big brave boy, I do occasionally find that there are some things in life that nudge me out of my comfort zone and test my character. Things like rock climbing, being too warm, or trying new things of any kind have been known to ignite a very tiny spark of anxiety in my otherwise permanently serene mental posture.

As an engagement gift, my fiancé’s parents have decided to pay for classes through which I might become a certified scuba diver. This past week we had to perform a maneuver known as a “bail out” which is where you jump into the water with your mask and fins in one hand and regulator and BC (Buoyancy Compensator. Like a life-jacket that inflates and deflates) in the other, and put your gear on while below the surface. When I was next on deck, the instructor said in a very calm, reassuring voice, “OK, whenever you’re ready you can go ahead.”

Not wanting to take even a second to consider my likely failure, I stumbled right into the drink and let myself sink while I went through my mental checklist: panic, remember that you are holding an air tank and regulator and needn’t die a horrible death, put regulator in mouth, continue panicking. Pleased with my progress thus far, I figured I may as well try to put my mask and fins on. Once I had my mask in place and could finally see clearly I noticed that my left hand was only holding a single fin. Confused, I looked around frantically to locate the truant flipper only to spy it drifting slowly toward the other end of the diving well. I scrambled after it, flipper in one hand, BC in the other. I quickly found that swimming with one’s hands full and no flippers on one’s feet makes for slow, awkward going. I made a gametime decision to wear my remaining flipper on my foot and proceed that way rather than just holding it my hand. Unsurprisingly, this proved to be an even less effective means of locomotion but I’m no quitter so I stuck it out.

Once I had reclaimed the runaway flipper, I turned my attention to the task of putting on my tank and BC. This presents its own unique challenge because the tank is a little bit buoyant itself, so as you slide one arm in one side of the vest, the other side begins to float away, precipitating in kind of reverse conga line wherein you chase your BC all around the bottom of the pool with your butt. I outsmarted the BC by backing it into the pool wall making further evasive maneuvers unlikely (note: this strategy might present a problem if I were to ever attempt it in an open water situation). With my gear finally in place, I swam back to the surface, triumphant. My instructor, who had been watching the entire time, stared at me expressionlessly. “Well,” he said, “I suppose that’ll do.”

-Ryan

Bluebeard

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 17:33:00 +0000

Unsure what else to do, I reached up and drew the key out of the ignition. “I’m going to be late for work.” I thought to myself. I considered fishing out my phone and sending my supervisor a quick email indicating my tardiness, but instead I just stayed motionless, drinking in the calming silence and letting myself lightly sample from all the emotions that were streaming through me. It was actually pretty peaceful and I knew it didn’t have any right to be.

After what seemed to me to be a very long time, I released the steering wheel, undid my seatbelt, and fell with a solid WHUMP! Scrambling to get upright, I reached over to the passenger door and tried the handle only to find it wouldn’t budge. Not one to panic even for a moment, I casually rolled myself to the rear of the vehicle thinking it highly likely that I could get the hatch open with no problem whatsoever. After confirming that there is no opening mechanism for the hatch on the inside of the vehicle, I sat down and resigned myself to some much-needed “me” time.

I was just about to waddle back to give the passenger door another attempt when I began to hear voices. “Hey, is anybody in there?” came a hoarse inquiry from outside. “Yes! I am in here and I am OK!” With no further provocation, a steel-toed work boot came crashing through the passenger-side window followed shortly by a dirty knit-cap containing a thickly whiskered head. “You all right?!” the head asked. “I am, yes.”

I crawled out the window, cutting my hands a little on the shards of glass. Standing to my full height, I assessed the situation and determined it to be sub-optimal. My vehicle of less than two years was certainly totaled. The “Mr. Sudden Stops Rubber Necky Mumber Jumber Man” was long gone. My New Year’s resolution of not destroying anything worth more than $50 was already busted. One of my rescuers put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Wow, man. Sorry. That sucks.” I sighed and my shoulders slumped. “Oh, it’s OK.” I said heavily. “I needed an oil change anyway.”

-Ryan

A Halloween Tale

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 20:39:00 +0000

A few days ago I made the uncharacteristically decent offer of taking my brother’s kids to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum (ICM). The ICM really is one of the more undersold treasures of Nap Town and they were featuring a haunted castle attraction complete with knights, dragons, and princesses. So basically like being in an immersive fairy tale! My brother was receptive to the offer but cautioned that his daughter scared easily and that that could prove to be an issue. “Oh, pish posh!” I thought to myself, “The ICM specializes in providing the people of central Indiana with top of the line child-oriented programming that couldn’t possibly be traumatizing in the least! 'Children’s' is quite literally their middle name!”

A few hours before I was to collect the kids, I confided to my partner-in-expectation-management and current sweetie-poo Ashley that I was a bit nervous about the evening being a success. I shared with her my brother’s words of warning and mused aloud what the chances were that the evening would end in tears. She reassured me in her own pleasant, fact-free way and I set my mind at ease for the intervening time. Upon arriving at my brother’s house I was informed that the oldest, whom I had expected to be the firm foundation of my “This isn’t scary, this is fun!” constituency, was already in a mournful mood due to having mislaid a favored cap earlier in the day. Great. I just get to the starting line and I’m already in the hole. The promise of holiday mirth-making and a Despicable Me DVD for the ride proved to be enough to mollify all concerned parties at the time, and so we departed for fun at the ICM.

Spirits were high enough by the time we arrived, and the sight of other costumed kids bounding and squealing with anticipation seemed a positive indicator of enjoyment to be had. Eventually our entire band found our way to the queue and I began to note, with some concern, that the kids we had in tow were among the youngest in attendance. There looked to be grade schoolers, middle schoolers, and even a few high schoolers, but of the kindergarten and younger crowd, I saw only a couple. I tried to keep things light and whimsical by pretending to be a spooky banana, but unfortunately my efforts seemed to have a limited effect on my niece who had not failed to perceive the sinister trappings of her environment.

By the time we got to the ticket taker, the kids were already stressed by the sounds of rattles and shouts from the room beyond which suggested that the attraction would be a heck of a lot scarier than I originally thought. I had expected wacky tickle-ghosts and goofy pudding-vampires but the build-up was more evocative of The Blair Witch Project than Scooby-Doo. As we stepped up to the drawbridge that led into the castle, the “gate keeper” approached us and glared menacingly. “Can you not?” I thought to myself as our host’s antics drove my niece closer and closer to a complete psychotic break. After a sufficient amount of prancing and gesturing had taken place, the gate keeper rang his bell and sneered, “You may enter…” I made a mental note that I didn’t much care for this chap’s manner and promised myself to spend less time with him in the future.

Still clinging foolishly to the last shred of hope that the evening might not be a bust, I hoisted my niece into my arms and chirped something about the castle being a lot like the one in Beauty and the Beast but my train of thought was disrupted by a ghoulish character leaping from the shadows and shouting, “What are you doing in my castle!?” That was enough for my not-overly-brave arm-monkey. My niece exploded into a fountain of tears and wails as I tried fruitlessly to de-escalate the situation amidst harassment on all sides from the play-actors making sinister screeches and howls. A raven-haired damsel appeared from around the corner and hissed, “Beware the dragon!” to which Ashley responded, “Actually, we’re a bit scared. Could we leave?” The damsel broke character immediately and said, “Oh, yes, please follow me!” and led us to a nearby door. As we stumbled our way around the poorly-lit backstage corridor looking for the exit, I reflected on what a poor expenditure of $150 this had been. The entire haunted castle was billed as taking about half-an-hour to completely explore. We had lasted less than a minute. Shambling back to our vehicle in the parking garage, shaken, defeated, psychologically worse for wear, my three-year-old nephew piped up for the first time that evening: “That was pretty good.”

Unrelated: a very exciting game 7 of the World Series tonight! Two title droughts enter! One drought leaves!

-Ryan

Last Day of Summer 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 03:23:00 +0000

Last weekend, I decided to head up to Warren Dunes to go camping and take advantage of the fading summer weather with my pal, Jimmy Jam (JJ). Camping tends to be a bit of a humbling experience for me and sadly, this is not usually because of pensive, Walden-grade introspection. For example, on this particular trip I found myself humbled when I observed exactly how much equipment seems to be required to keep two reasonably healthy and competent adults alive and in relative comfort for all of two days. Roughing it indeed.

Even though the over-packing and over-preparing may be a bit of a blow to the masculine sense of self-reliance, I know from experience how deflating it can be to attempt a weekend in the woods and find yourself in want of some piece of equipment or other. As longtime readers of This Blog and You may note, I once neglected to include my sleeping bag in my camping inventory and I found the episode to be quite trying.

Still, any misgivings concerning our bulging suitcases and duffel bags notwithstanding, I couldn't deny that I was very much looking forward to enjoying food that we had brought. The appeal of spending time away from all (or at least some of) the amenities of home is a bit difficult to define, but for me, at least half the fun is preparing meals over a campfire.

JJ and I began preparations for lunch almost as soon as we arrived at our site. Neither of us had eaten much for breakfast that day and, seeing as we hadn't stopped for any sort of sustenance en route, we were quite hungry. Our lunch was to be stadium-style Johnsonville bratwurst simmered in a cast iron deep skillet along with halved sweet peppers, an entire vidalia onion (diced) and two tablespoons of unsalted butter for good measure. The resulting meal did not disappoint. Without exaggeration or exception, those had to have been the most delicious bratwurst I have ever tasted. The accompanying Dale's Pale Ale by Oskar Blues complimented the already spectacular flavor beautifully.

After a full afternoon of climbing, swimming, and being kind of lost in the woods for about forty minutes (true story), we returned to our campsite, again famished. Our menu for the evening was to be diced potatoes and a vegetable medley with a half-pound of Bob Evan's spicy sausage and sweet peppers mixed in, wrapped in a goodly amount of tin foil and placed directly on the fire. I learned to call this particular style of meal "Hobo Dinners" but I have come to learn that they are also known by the somewhat more descriptive term, "Tin Foil Dinners." This meal turned out to be pretty good but it did want for a bit more flavor and juiciness. As it happens, I'm to blame for both of these shortcomings inasmuch as I had agreed to bring barbecue sauce but I had forgotten to do so. Still, it was a satisfying enough meal and besides, everybody knows the best meal on a camping trip is breakfast.

I awoke the following morning and immediately set to coaxing the still-smoldering embers from the previous night back into flame. As I was busied with this, JJ, who was fiddling around near our picnic table, murmured purposefully, "Oh. That sucks." I turned to see what was troubling him. "Raccoons got into our trash." was his almost mournful reply. I shot him a mildly conciliatory expression and returned my attention to fire-starting. Having to clean up a little extra trash might be a bit inconvenient but no reason to get all crestfallen.

I had only just begun to kindle a few shy tendrils of flame from the smoking, ashy coals when JJ again pierced the early morning quite with a wail of defeat and exasperation. "Raccoons took all our food!" I hurried over to where he was hunched over our cooler and saw that he was right. Our cheese, sausage, butter, peppers, and onions were all gone. All that remained were a few eggs marked by tiny paw prints. While I admit it was not the predominant emotion that I was feeling at the time, I do remember being a little impressed that the mangy little egg thieves had been able to open the lid of our heavy-duty Coleman Xtreme© Series. But as I say, not so impressed that I wouldn't have gladly bludgeoned their furry little brains out for the safe return of another egg or two.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and JJ suggested that he go to the campground general store and see if they had any eggs and bacon while I prepared the fire. While he was gone I added more wood to the fire, put on water for coffee, and found about a dozen half-eaten sweet peppers all in a big heap about a dozen yards from our tent. Little rascals didn't even like them.

After a few minutes JJ returned and I took about eight strips of the bacon and lined the skillet with them, covered it, and set it on the fire. I then began to tidy up around the site and grind the coffee. My attention was drawn back to the bacon when it was pointed out to me that it had burst into flame. I looked, and sure enough, menacing tongues of flame lapped hungrily between the lid and the lip of the skillet. I quickly accoutered myself with our non-fireproof oven mitts and snatched the vessel from the fire ring, thereby sloshing the grease inside and causing the contents to go supernova. Again thinking quickly, JJ recalled that water was just the thing for extinguishing grease fires and deposited the boiling contents of our coffeepot over the skillet. Once extinguished, I rested the smoldering pot on our picnic table and removed the lid. Out belched an angry plume of concrete-colored smoke. Once we had fanned away enough of the haze, we saw to our astonishment that our bacon had vanished. All that remained was a thick, oily goo that roughly resembled paving tar. Disappointed but not defeated, I gingerly poured the inky mess onto the ground and tried to give the skillet a bit of a rinse with the water left in the coffee pot. I then reapplied more bacon but kept a sharper eye on it this time. Once I couldn't stand the sight of the bacon any more, I deposited them on a plate and added the eggs. The result was just the saddest-looking breakfast you'd ever see.

As it turns out, melted bacon residue turns breakfast black.

I hope you all had a great Labor Dabor Day.

-Ryan

Hammered

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 20:14:00 +0000

Last Monday, in the sweltering heat of an overcast Rio afternoon, Polish hammer thrower Anita Włodarczyk stepped into a seven-foot concrete ring. The atmosphere in Olympic Stadium Engenhão was sedate and the conspicuous patches of empty seats littered throughout the stands added further punctuation to the thundering quiet. All in all, it seemed hardly the setting one might expect for a sporting spectacle of Olympic caliber.

Still, perhaps the muted enthusiasm of the crowd shouldn't have been all that hard to understand. After all, the flagship events of track and field wouldn't be contested until later that evening and the celebrity-class athletes like Usain Bolt and Allyson Felix were nowhere to be seen. Anita, though not as conventionally glamorous-looking as her more famous peers, cut an inspirational figure as she assumed her starting position: feet spread, shoulders squared, eyes fixed icily ahead. From her gloved left hand, a thin, braided wire stretched to the ground where it was moored to a pitiless metal orb.

At an audio prompting from the officials' booth, Anita began her routine. At first, her feet remained firmly planted as she swung the hammer in tight circles overhead. As the implement began to reach terrible speed, Anita gracefully and expertly dipped her arms and followed its momentum into ever quickening spins. After just a few rotations, she released her grip and sent her hammer sailing through the steamy Rio air.

The release must have felt good to Anita because she immediately let loose a yell of gleeful jubilation as she turned to watch the hammer continue its flight. Another audio cue sounded. A white flag was raised. The throw was a good one. A world-record throw in fact. And Anita simply erupted.

Shouting uproariously, Anita bounded out of the throwers' pit with her arms raised high in triumph. Once the official numbers were displayed, confirming that Anita had indeed just made Olympic history, her celebrations were reified, and she began hugging everyone that she encountered. Here was vindication. Here was joy personified. In a few moments of technical perfection, Anita had accomplished an athletic feat unachieved by her nearest rival (herself). All of the blood, sweat, and tears shed over a lifetime of training had been redeemed in an instant and Anita was exulting in the rapture of the moment.

And yet, the corresponding reactions from the officials, spectators, and media still seemed a bit tepid compared to the frenzied outpouring of adulation that accompanied similar feats of athletic prowess. Photographers didn't follow Anita all the way around the track as she did a victory lap. Reporters didn't crowd around her to catch a snippet of her reflected glory. I mean, it's not like she had just finished a jaw-dropping gymnastic routine or run a race at super human speeds. All she did was take a nine-pound ball of implacable steel and throw it farther than any woman ever had before. For the record, I affirm and have no intrinsic problem with the reality that some sporting events are just simply more compelling spectacles than others. You wouldn't necessarily expect Phelpsian levels of media coverage over a one-time happening in a second-rate event like the hammer throw would you? Perhaps not. But what I do know is that somewhere in a different hemisphere, in a cubicle in an office in a building along the outskirts of Indianapolis, there was at least one individual who was deeply moved and who was cheering and celebrating right along with Anita in her moment of victory.

I watch the Olympics at work is I guess all I'm trying to say.

-Ryan

Pie in the Sky

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 16:48:00 +0000

Because hypotheticals are annoying, let’s suppose that you were in the process of moving and let’s suppose further that you find you have more possessions than can reasonably fit into your new digs. Not to worry, because an acquaintance of yours says you can stash all of your extra stuff in his barn for as long as you want; no worries at all. So you take him up on it and begin shoveling your stuff into his barn and you continue to add things to the pile long after you’re finished moving. Then one day, years later, this barn-owner informs you that you can still store stuff at his place but only about two cubic feet worth, and anything in excess of that will be burned if you don’t get it out of there soon. How might that make you feel? Do you really have any right to be upset? If my recent experience with Microsoft OneDrive is any indication the answer to that question can only be maybe!

I first signed up for OneDrive way back in 2008 when it was still styled as “Windows Live Skydrive”. It offered a then-unthinkable 5gb of free online storage which I thought was marvelous though I never really used it for anything but sharing the odd file or two with friends. Fast forward to last year when my then-new employer issued me a smartphone with several mandatory apps already installed. Drive space already being limited, I downloaded the OneDrive app to automatically backup my pictures and videos so that I wouldn’t need to keep them stored locally. The drive space offered by OneDrive had blossomed from 5gb to 30gb which was plenty for a casual user like me.

Last week, I logged into the web portal for OneDrive to try to find a particular file and I was greeted by an advisement that read: “On July 27, 2016, the amount of storage that comes with OneDrive will change from 15 GB to 5 GB. We are also discontinuing the 15 GB camera roll bonus. You can learn more at our FAQ.”

I quickly took to the best user-tech bulletin boards that the web had to offer to see if there were any loopholes I might exploit to prevent my drive size from being reduced. The most common responses were “No,” “I host my own cloud using a Mandriva server that I stole from work,” and “lol, e@t a d!ck microsux!!1!” Another piece of advice that I saw more than once was to migrate to Google Drive which is what I will probably wind up doing. I already use GD for web hosting reasons and it’s been very stable for several years. Despite all the fuss it’s caused me, I think I will miss using OneDrive’s interface. In my opinion it’s cleaner and more intuitive than GD’s and perhaps more importantly, even after eight years, OneDrive still looks very much like it did when I first signed up for it! Right down to the “Total drive space: 5gb”!

-Ryan

Sport Times 01: Leagues and Logos

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 14:16:00 +0000

In addition to all the other great things it's got going for it, the spring season is a very exciting time for sports viewing. For fans with international tastes, the European Rugby Champions Cup playoffs are going on as are the knockout stages of UEFA Champions League (about which I don't care at all, despite the best efforts of the NBC Sports app on my phone). Domestically, the MLB regular season has only just begun and the NHL and NBA playoffs are in their first rounds.

In my casual following of various sporting campaigns, I noticed that you can almost tell from what sport/league a team comes just by their logo. As many sports writers have noted, you can easily identify an NBA logo because nearly three-quarters of them feature a basketball or some other piece of basketball-related indicia. Another common feature is that, of those NBA teams whose logos feature some kind of face (either of an animal or human), the direction of focus is most often straight forward (Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Milwaukee, Minnesota, New Orleans, and Memphis). NBA exceptions to this convention include Boston, Dallas, Washington, and until recently, Toronto. On the other hand, NFL team logos face, without exception, to the right. The exceptions to this are Philadelphia, which faces left, and Oakland which faces straight ahead (and Tampa, which also faces forward, although you could argue it has no face). The NHL is split almost perfectly in half with five teams facing right (Ottawa, Nashville, San Jose, Arizona, and Vancouver) , four teams facing left (Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Minnesota), and one team facing straight ahead (Florida).

The MLB is a horse of a different color when it comes to discussions of sporting iconography because baseball teams tend to prominently utilize two logos with their brands. One logo, usually a stylized lettering featuring the initials of either the team's city or club name, is sometimes known as a monogram, or cap insignia. The other logo, which usually incorporates a baseball bat along with either a hat or bird, has been traditionally referred to as the primary logo although this rule of thumb is no longer reliable in official parlance. I think that monograms are cool and are probably one of my favorite things about baseball following sport peppers. The only MLB team currently without a monogram is Toronto whose cap insignia is a painfully unimaginative red maple leaf.

Speaking of Canadian sport teams, you'll find that they really want to let you know that they're Canadian. Canadian hockey teams (none of whom are in the playoffs this year) flat out tell you of their Canadian status in their club name: Canucks, Canadiens, and Maple Leafs. Like anybody was going to forget anyway.

In other news, last weekend saw Toulon RFC get knocked out of the European Rugby Champions Cup thus dashing the possibility of an unprecedented four championships in a row. Worth mentioning is the fact that three championships in a row was unprecedented before Toulon's successful campaign last year, but it still made me sad.

A tree fell on my house.

-Ryan

Casimir Pulaski Day 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 04:06:00 +0000

Here is a mirthful account to put you in an appropriate mood this Casimir Pulaski Day!

A few days ago I met an old friend of mine for breakfast. He and I have known eachother for more than twenty years and though our exchanges are less frequent than they used to be, they are still always a great pleasure. For most of my life, I've looked up to this guy and regarded him with the sort of glowing veneration that is usually reserved for beatified saints and Mr. Rogers. If pressed, I don't know that I could point to any particular anecdote that might explain my lofty appraisal of him, but he always seemed to garner praise from the right sources and I respected that. I was fairly convinced that of all my friends and acquaintances, none had so impeachable a character or so steadfast a moral center. Little did I know that beneath that winning façade beat a heart as dark as nothingness itself.

Him: [as we prepare to leave] "It's been great talking with you, man. I wish we did this more often."

Me: [trying not to gush] "Oh, sure."

Him: "Before we go, there's something that's been on my mind that I need to confess to you."

Me: [super impressed by his humility and piety] "Is that right?"

Him: "Remember when we were kids and you told me that you liked so-and-so?"

Me: "Uh, yeah."

Him: "Well, I told her."

Me: “Oh! Haha, that’s fine; don't think anything about it. She probably would have figured out anyway. Kids do stupid stuff. It’s crazy that you’ve remembered that so many years later!”

Me five minutes later in my car: "That son of a b_____!"

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day! I hope you all celebrated by attending a Bible study at Michael's house!

-Ryan

Bases for Breakfasts

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 21:43:00 +0000

Like many Americans should have, I celebrated a weird British holiday by enjoying a texmex breakfast novelty on the cheap. Of course the free AM Crunchwrap on offer at Taco Bell this morning had little to do with Guy Fawkes day, and much to do Lorenzo Cain's stolen base in game 1 of the World Series.

Speaking of the World Series, congratulations to the Kansas City Royals. I know that the transative property has little purchase in the sporting arena, but it was a little dissapointing to see so little trouble taken to dispatch a team that had so little trouble dispatching the Cubs.

I patronized a haunted corn maze on the 31st. It was being staffed by mostly high schoolers from what I could tell. The actors in the maze were enthusiastic (if a bit on the obnoxious side) and it seemed to me that they were having a good time. I had a pretty good time as well, but I am not a fan of the psycho-killer motif that seems to pervade the haunted house scene these days. When it comes to haunted houses, I'm looking for more "Scooby-Doo" than "Saw".

So New Zealand unsurprisingly won their game against Australia last Saturday, making them the first team to win three RWC championships and the first team to win back to back RWC championships. I would have loved for anybody else to win, honestly, but it's hard to harbor too much resentment toward a team that does stuff like this.

So This Blog and You quietly turned ten years old over the weekend. I had some notion of redesigning my web template to mark the occasion, but as with so many other blog-related aspirations of mine, it just kind of didn't happen. As some of you may know, This Blog and You began as an undergrad assignment to familiarize myself with the then-new Blogger platform. I miss when more of my friends and aquaintences blogged on the regular. I miss when I blogged on the regular, actually.

Paul O'Connell signed a two-year contract with Toulon! European Rugby Champions Cup starts next week! I can hardly wait!

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

-Ryan

Rough Month for Sport Games

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 20:40:00 +0000

I haven't written any posts for This Blog and You this month, which is a shame.

The Rugby World Cup (RWC) has been going on all October, delivering a few colorful talking points of its own. South Africa was beaten by Japan early in pool play, securing the biggest upset in RWC history. Also making history is the English national team, being the first host nation to fail to make it to the playoff stage of the tournament. Lastly, this was the first RWC in which no norther hemisphere team made it to the semifinals. The championship game will be played tomorrow by Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand won the last RWC and is favored to be the first team to win back to back.

Though I was hired to be a C# developer, I am occasionally brought into some one-off project out in the field. This past Friday I drove out to beautiful Greensburg, Indiana to help out at a Honda manufacturing plant. I drove about forty different Civics in the span of about nine hours. For no reason.

Though it's nearly gone, I hope you all have had a

-Ryan

A Beachfront Serenade

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 13:26:00 +0000

The autumn season is upon us. Time for hayrides, Count Chocula, and obsessive re-listening to Sufjan Steven's Illinois ablum.

Rugby World Cup 2015 is well under way. I suppose the biggest talking point would be Japan's shock victory over South Africa. I know superlatives and hyperbole are part and parcel with sports journalism these days, but you'd not be wrong to accept the punditry's claim that this is the biggest upset in rugby history.

This commentary actually occurred during a match yesterday:
C1: "He just saved France's bacon!"
C2: "Francis Bacon? I don't think he played rugby."

A little over a month ago, I got to travel to New England for work. One evening I was walking back to my vehicle after an impromptu stroll along a piece of that good New Hampshire ocean front, when a voice called out from the darkness. I looked up to see an elderly couple sitting on a deck overlooking the beach and the man was gesturing for me to approach which I did. "Did you get in?" he asked in a thick New England accent. I smiled and informed him that I had only waded a little bit.

He eyed me suspiciously. "Where are you from?" I told him that I was from Indiana. He responded by bursting into a hoarse cackle.

"Indiana!? Nobody's from Indiana! I bet I know more about Indiana than you do! Do you know the Indiana state song?" I said that I did.

"Can you sing it?" he demanded. I told him that, sadly, I did not know all the words. With no further provocation, he burst into an impassioned rendition of On the Banks of the Wabash as his wife looked on with tired satisfaction.

-Ryan

The Lives of Three Sneakers

noreply@blogger.com (Wolfgang) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 19:56:00 +0000

There's no denying that the character George Costanza of Seinfeld had impeccable fashion sense. So taken was I by his bold accoutermentation, that I purposed to imitate his wardrobe decisions in my own dress. Specifically, in the ankle-and-down region.

The first pair, purchased sometime around 2004-2005, were the most blatantly George-like. They were onboard for plenty of adventures, traveling to Louisville, Florida, Omaha, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, California, and Germany, just to name a few.

As pair #1 started to show the wear of its mileage, I invested in a second pair and soon discovered they sucked. Purchased in early 2011, it was not even 2012 before the soles began to wear thin and crack, despite only wearing them to and from work.

A little over a month ago, I purchased a third pair and so far, they don't seem too shabby. My hope is, that by the time they are as worn and undone as pair #1, they will have been a party to a comparable amount of memory-making.

Happy September.

-Ryan