Will at Home

Apple iInteract

2010-02-18T21:17:00.000-05:00

I'm having trouble coming up with a name for the Apple IVR (iVR?) because iPhone is already taken. Anyhow, here's how you know you're using one:

It takes it until 5 years after everybody else makes one, but when they do release it, it "revolutionizes talking to operators on the telephone".
When it finally comes out, it's missing basic features, like the 1 key. Shut up. We know what's good for you
Some 12-year-old kid finds a way to root the system so you can finally use the 1 key. This voids your warranty. Shut up. We know what's good for you
It costs 3x as much as Windows Telephone Explorer
Although Apple claims it's the most secure iVR around, it's consistently the first iVR hacked in pwn2own competitions
You thumb through operators in coverflow. "Doesn't it make all your operators look great? Just beautiful."
Although it never locks up, it often stops responding, and your phone spins in circles and changes colors
To get an operator, simultaneously press #, *, 0, 5, 5, 1. (For the humor in that, see item 2).
While it's easy enough to dial in, once you've dialed in from five different phones, you can no longer dial in again. Also, dialing in from other countries is strictly prohibited.
Only works with the iPhone. Shut up. We know what's good for you.

....and one more thing
On banking systems, all account balances are rounded so they're easier to understand. "You have about one-thousand dollars"

Windows Telephone Explorer

2010-02-17T16:39:00.000-05:00

What if Microsoft made an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system? You know - the automated things that allow you to use your phone to answer questions?

"Your call is very important to us. Please continue to hold, and your call will be ignored in the order it was received."
You must simultaneously press #,*,0 before entering your account number
The system is unavailable the second Tuesday of every month
To get an operator, simultaneously press #,*,0 then 6
The only prompt voice available is the same voice as Stephen Hawking's
Three months after everybody raves about Apple's new feature (don't worry - I'll do one of these for Apple, too), Windows Telephone Explorer has it as well
Early versions, your user ID is any three digits followed by any seven digits such that the sum of the seven digits is divisible by seven. New versions, your user ID is 25 alpha-numeric characters.
#3 gets you a directory of all the available options.
At odd intervals, the system will tell you an unexpected error has occurred, your phone has turned blue, and you must remove and reinstall the battery to continue.
"Average hold time is 4 minutes." "Average hold time is 14 hours." "Average hold time is 30 seconds." "Average hold time is 9 hours."

Activities

2010-02-14T21:20:00.000-05:00

My brother, whom I love dearly, once said in response to one of my tweets that, "any event that is decided by human judges is not a sport, it's an activity." I totally agreed with him and still do. I can't find the original set of posts anymore, so I can't remember precisely what the thread was, but I'm sure it had something to do with not liking figure skating.

Unfortunately, when reviewing the statement, it turns out that there are a whole slew of activities I used to call sports. I still enjoy them, but I'd be hard-pressed to convince myself that they're scored completely objectively:

MMA
Boxing
(All other legal contact sports. Illegal ones are pretty objective, which is why they're illegal)
Bull Riding

What's really disconcerting about the last one is that there are other rodeo events that would qualify as sports while bull riding would not - to be precise, calf roping, barrel riding, and when the kids run out to catch the flag on the tail of the calf.

Any help here? I mean, because of the inherent danger and cool factor (but like, real tough-guy kind of cool - not like X-games kind of cool), do they get a free pass into sport? Or do I just have to resign myself to the fact that while I ordinarily make fun of "activities", I actually like some? I mean, they're more sport than professional coloring, right?

Soulmates

2010-02-14T17:41:00.000-05:00

Whenever I try to say something mushy to Mrs. At Home, I trip all over my shoelaces. Expect more of the same.

<mushy>
I used to be offended by the term "soulmates". And the trite way most people generally throw it around still offends me. "Soulmates" is usually used to rationalize doing something wrong. "We divorced because he just wasn't my soulmate." People claim that there's somebody out there who's exactly right for you, which excuses you divorcing somebody you married to keep you warm until you found them.

I've long been a believer that God hates divorce, so I try to as well. When I said "I do", I was making a promise to Mrs. At Home and God - 'til death do us part. And while the goal is still the same, the sentiment was all wrong - I had taken the possibility of there being such things as soulmates out of the picture, and regardless of how we met (at that point, I thought it was a strange set of coincidences), that I was to stay married to Mrs. At Home and it would somehow be heroic of me to stick around even if I hated sticking around. It didn't matter who I married - I was supposed to hang in there. Even if I was Samwise Gamgee following Frodo into Mordor.

Fortunately, my thinking has been corrected. I still hate divorce because God makes clear that that's not His design for marriage. What's different now is that I see that the strange set of coincidences was not a strange set of coincidences. It wasn't by accident that we ended up together, it was by design. So now, I do believe we're soulmates, insofar as God did intend for us to be married, and He orchestrated circumstances so that it happened. I know that Matthew 22 says that there won't be marriage or giving in marriage in Heaven (because there, we will be united with Christ), but I know we will know one another, and that we spent our short lives together preparing for our eternal lives.

Mrs. At Home, I believe you're my soulmate. Not in some strange, trite, whimsical way that an adolescent sits around dreaming of their perfect mate with perfect hair and perfect body and no personality blemishes. But I believe you're my soulmate in a much better way. God perfectly designed for me to be yours, to love you, to honor you, to protect you, to cherish you. You're different from me in all the ways that I need. You're the same as me in all the ways that are important. I want to continue to get to know you, what you love, what you don't love, what thrills you, what makes you sad so I can do everything I can to avoid it, and to keep trying to make you the perfect dinner. I want to know everything about you, grow old with you, and tell the world how much I love you. So will you let me?

Happy Valentines Day.

</mushy>

Stomach Issues

2010-02-07T22:24:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. What's even worse is the story I'm going to use to break the silence. I think all two of my readers will probably unsubscribe after this post (even if it's a true story).

If you've got a weak stomach, stop reading now. For the love of all that's good in the world, stop reading now.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who say Labrador Retrievers are smart, and those who've had a Labrador Retriever with stomach issues.

This morning, CJ would not stop whining. She woke Mrs. At Home up at 6:30. Mrs. At Home did the normal morning routine - take the dog out to potty, fed her, took her back out to poop (because this smart dog can't pee and poop in the same trip) and put her back in the crate to get some sleep. I can't go back to sleep once I've been wakened, so I got up and started making breakfast. Since I was dealing with breakfast, I couldn't deal with the dog who continued to whine. "No noise!" is the command you use with these dogs to stop them from making noise. She wasn't having it. My yelling at the dog woke Mrs. At Home up.

Since I was frustrated with the dog, and Mrs. At Home was up, she took CJ from her crate and had CJ with her in the bathroom as she was getting ready for church. I have to give all this background information in noise, etc. to explain why the dog was in the bathroom. After breakfast was in the oven, I went into the bathroom to shave.

I did a couple of shaving-prep moves, and turned around to fetch a towel, and there it was. A giant pile of half-digested dog food. About 8 inches in diameter and at least three inches high. This was a full bowl of dog food on the bathroom floor. Right where I was about to step. I left to go get a rag to begin cleaning up this mess. When I came back, the dog was face-down in it, and had already (re)consumed about a third of it.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who say Labrador Retrievers are smart, and those who've had a Labrador Retriever with stomach issues.

Later in the day, the dog vomited again. Mrs. At Home had the pleasure of having to clean this mess up. As she was finding a rag, she announced that there was either a sock in it, or that the dog had coughed up a liver in the process. When she was done cleaning it up, she found one of the three ropes from this. If you look at the product description, you'll see that the ropes in this toy are 10" long. 10" of rope this dog had in her digestive system. We threw the toy away because the ropes were all missing three weeks ago.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who say Labrador Retrievers are smart, and those who've had a Labrador Retriever with stomach issues.

And this is after the dog had stomach issues two weeks ago and after all was said and done managed to poop the rope from one of these.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who say Labrador Retrievers are smart, and those who've had a Labrador Retriever with stomach issues.

So there you go - one of the smartest of breeds of dogs eats rope, and when the body can't handle the rope, this smartest of breeds of dogs eats its own vomit.

Tech I Like: Lala

2010-01-18T23:04:00.000-05:00

When I heard about Apple buying Lala, I decided to try to find out what Lala was all about. I tried Lala for a couple of days, and didn't "get it". Then a friend of mine who has some of the same tastes (eclectic) in music that I do, and who also doesn't think that indie music is good just because it's indie started recommending things. After a couple more days of playing with it, I got it. So here's a rundown of Lala and some of the things I love about it so maybe you'll give it a try and love it, too.

At its root, Lala is about listening to songs online. They have a catalog of about 8 million songs (who doesn't anymore)? But it's very much different from other services like Slacker and Pandora. I still like Slacker and Pandora, but for different reasons. With those services, you "seed" a playlist with an artist or song you like, and they go and play songs that are much like the first you selected.

With Lala, if you like a song enough that you want to own it, there are three ways you can buy it: as a web song where you can sign into Lala from any browser and listen to any songs you own online through Lala's interface; as an MP3, where the song is available for you to play online just like the first model, plus you get a download of the MP3 (256-bit DRM-free) that's downloaded once (being DRM-free, you can copy it to other computers you own, or other devices, of course), and finally, you can buy the CD - where you also get the web version and MP3 version.

Before you buy, you can listen entire songs once. Once you've listened to a whole song, the next time you try to play it, you're limited to a 30-second sample. The benefit, though, is that if you're like me and like albums more than songs, you can listen to an entire album before you commit to buying it.

Web songs are only a dime. Albums end up being the dime-per-song with a 10% discount. So a 12-song album will generally cost $1.08. MP3's are .89 each (cheaper than iTunes), and you usually get some amount of discount on the MP3 album - usually 20-25%. The rare time they have a physical CD, the cost is about the same as if you were to buy it at the store, but you get the web and MP3 versions immediately.

After you sign up for Lala, you can also download the Lala Music Mover. It will go through your own MP3 library, and any songs it finds that you own that it has in its collection, will automatically get added to your web collection. This ends up being a huge benefit if you have a great big collection already and you don't want to carry a giant hard drive with you to the office. Or if you want to have a friend listen to a song but you're at their house - just sign in to your Lala account and give it a listen.

Much like last.fm, Lala has social features. It'll tie to your Facebook account so when you like something you can publish it to your wall or tweet it on Twitter. You also see the listening, recommending, and purchasing history of any friends who are also on Lala. This is another huge win if you've got friends with similar (or different, but good) taste in music. A couple of albums friends have recommended to me have been instant web-buys for me.

Then to make the whole thing even more enticing, when you first sign up for Lala, you get 10 web credits - so you can get 10 web songs for free. These credits expire in 30 days. After you've signed up, any friend you recommend who signs up will earn you 5 more credits (although I haven't seen any of those credits show up for friends I got to sign up).

So the way I normall use Lala is this:

I see what my friends with good taste are listening to
If the artist is interesting to me, and I've got time, I'll add an album of theirs to my queue and listen to the whole album
If I like the album enough to listen to it occasionally, I might buy the web album (a buck for an album!)
Then I listen to albums I own - either Lala-only or songs I owned in my own library already

If you like albums, I can't tell you how huge this is. The ability to preview an entire album before buying it is amazing. And then, to be able to buy the whole album for just over $1.00 is also huge.

So here's a great big list of great benefits to Lala:

Get album recommendations from friends
Listen to entire albums before committing to buying the whole thing - not just 30-second samples
Listen to all your music (even music you bought from elsewhere) from any browser - no more schlepping hard drives around
Looking at logs, it looks like the song matching in the Music Mover is based on a 10-second sample of the song itself, so you don't have to name your songs particularly, or have the right tags in the song, etc.
Cheap-ish MP3 album downloads
Pick any artist or song or album you want to listen to - unlike Pandora where they'll play something by the artist, but not necessarily what you wanted.
Social features - see what your friends like, recommend things to your friends, etc.
The web player keeps playing in almost all navigation cases. The only time I recall the player stopping is when I have to enter PayPal information to buy. Speaking of which...
They take PayPal, so if you don't trust them with your credit card information, you can use PayPal
I've not added music back into my monthly budget yet, but you can add money to a wallet so if you have a monthly music budget, add that to your wallet at the beginning of the month.
Free web-only credits for a few different things.
256-bit DRM-free MP3's (for less than they cost on iTunes)

I'm not yet sure how Apple's acquisition of Lala is going to pan out in the future. Certainly something might happen to either Lala's pricing or iTunes pricing because there's a huge difference in price (.89 USD per MP3 on Lala vs. .99 or 1.29 per on iTunes). The only integration they've made so far is that the 30-second previews on iTunes Charts are provided by Lala. There are rumors of Apple wanting to have an online iTunes service where your songs are available on the web - a model that would look very much like Lala's current model. We'll see.

There are a few downsides:

While some rare artists are available on Lala, not all of them. I can't find any albums by Pan-Metropolitan Trio on there yet.
There was supposed to be a Lala iPhone app, but it's been under review by Apple for quite some time. I think Apple's acquisition of Lala has delayed this even more. So for now, there's not a good way to listen to web-only songs on a mobile device.
Some songs have a yellow play button - these songs are only available as downloads when you buy a whole MP3 album. I've been bitten by this once thinking it would be available if I bought a whole web album.
There seem to be some wacky inconsistencies in the free web credits. I haven't received any for friends who joined, but I magically got 20 at some random time. Maybe they'll run into this blog post and give me a whole bunch more credits.

If you want to try it out, please hit me up for an invite so that I can hopefully get some credits for the invite.

Avatar Review

2010-01-09T14:50:00.000-05:00

I thought since I gave it such a thorough bashing on Twitter, I should give Avatar a complete review. I'm not much of a moviegoer, nor much of a movie buff, so take the review with a grain of salt.

First the good. You must see Avatar. You must see it in the theater. Preferably on a big giant screen. The CG and 3D animation is far beyond anything I've seen yet. It's visually appealing, incredibly creative, rich, lush, and beautiful to look at. It is an absolutely stunning picture to look at. And much like the Matrix did, I think it's going to end up re-defining what can be done with technology in cinema.

But that's the end of the good part. Movies (to me, anyway) are about much more than just the visuals. I go to movies for the music, the acting, the story, and the moving picture part of it.

I remember hearing music once or twice in the movie, and it wasn't good. So music added nothing to the film whatsoever. I can't imagine the soundtrack is going to sell a bazillion copies, but I'm sure the score will win a bunch of Academy awards because with the amount of money spent on the film, they won't possibly be able to throw enough awards at it.

The acting was rotten. Just bad. Sigourney Weaver was alright, but beyond that, the acting was bad. Maybe not as bad as all the actors from The Phantom Menace, but bad.

The story was awful. I can't say enough bad things about the story. It's clearly political, but at such a childish level. I don't mind people who have politics contrary to mine, but if you're going to try to sell me on an idea different than what I currently have, you need to make it compelling. The characters were un-interesting, the plot moved horribly slowly, and there was absolutely no character or plot development. Within the first 20 minutes of the three-hour film, you knew the entirety of the plot, and you were just waiting for the story to end. There was a total of about 7 minutes of plot in the three-hour film. To boot, the story has been done a million times already - at the end of the film, I realized I had just seen a really, really expensive rendition of Shrek, only far less interesting than Shrek.

So there you have it. Avatar is a must-see movie. But that's it - must-see. Do yourself a favor and take your iPod with you and listen to Appalachian Spring or maybe some Debussy or something while you watch it.

An interesting thing on the radio I heard about it was that it's so visually stunning and so well-suited to the big screen that they're saying movies like this are what will save theaters from a certain death due to people just waiting to download movies off the Internet. While I agree visually, I think Star Trek had far more to offer in terms of acting, story, plot, music, sound, and suspense.

Yip - I should've saved my $5 and gone to see either Sherlock Holmes or Invictus instead.

Bionic Flagellum

2010-01-06T22:28:00.000-05:00

Yes, our conversations have reached a new level of weirdness. But I just thought I'd share the phrase in a post. In 20 years, when bionic flagellum are all the rage, remember you heard of them first from me.

Maybe by tomorrow I can update my post with a new screenshot with one hit - this one.

Why I Social Media

2010-01-05T14:30:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know that's a grammatical stupidity. And I'm the one who always bashes people for mis-spellings, complete word mis-uses, and a complete lack of understandability. Forgive me. Johnny Dangerously's last name was an adverb.

The linked article from The Guardian says at least what's on my mind about Twitter, and to a lesser degree Facebook. I tend to tweet about food, what I'm doing, a little about work, friends, technology, and the kids. I agree that the posts I make are banal, shallow, and for 140 characters, not very complete thoughts.

Before I explain why I engage in social media (particularly Twitter), I'll explain some of what I think are not reasons I use social media.

I want to start a revolution, 140 characters at a time
I have cool products that I want to sell, so I follow bazillions of people
The things I say are more valuable than any other words to be read on the Internet.
I'm just plain narcissistic

At least I hope those aren't my reasons.

Now, for the reason I use social media - it keeps me connected to the people I love in a way that's easier than driving 3,000 miles to see them, or pick up a phone and interrupt their dinner. Certainly, I have friends that I have close relationships with. People with whom I do spend quality time. But social media has not only allowed me to keep those relationships together when I'm apart from those people for a long time, but also has actually allowed me to find people near me with whom I had much in common - some of the closest relationships I have now are because of their "narcissism" - or that they said something about themselves that struck a chord with me.

Think about it this way. Before Twitter or even email, did you call your friends on the phone? And were your discussions always deep and meaningful? Or did you have conversations between the deep and meaningful ones where you talked about the weather, what you like to cook, or how your kids are doing? There's a dramatic difference between knowing a person and knowing about a person. But I think having a close relationship with a person does involve wanting to know more about them. The closer that relationship is, the more you want to know about the person, even if it's silly, banal, or what they might perceive as boring.

What's more, because of Twitter, I've been able to make new friendships that previously were just acquaintances. I've learned I have much more in common with some friends than I thought. I even plan to take one of those friends up on a visit one of these days - the plans fell through the last time around.

So friends, tweet it up. Tell me about the basement remodeling, about replacing pieces on the Arodyne, about paintball, about shooting clay pigeons, about the kids' birthdays and sporting events.

That means you, J, M, and B.

HandBrake 64-bit

2010-01-03T17:45:00.001-05:00

The AppleTV is the best device for people with small children and large video libraries. I've posted on it before, so that's not what this is about.

Getting those DVD's whose cases we're throwing away onto the AppleTV requires me to rip them to my video library - just like ripping CD's into iTunes. The tool I've been using for all these years is HandBrake. HandBrake allows you to go straight from DVD source to a very nice H.264 encoding suitable for AppleTV (and a lot of other platforms) with minimal fuss, yet is highly customizable for the uber-geek. And it has a new, fancy, 64-bit release which is very, very fast compared to previous releases and 32-bit releases.

The thing is, in order for HandBrake to read your DVD's, it has to decrypt them first. It has a sub-par library built-in for decrypting the DVD, but if you have it available, it will use the very excellent decrypting libraries in VLC. Since it just uses the libraries in VLC instead of calling the executable, the VLC you use must also be 64-bit if you intend to use the 64-bit HandBrake.

So if you want to use a 64-bit HandBrake and have VLC installed, but you get something like this:

This post may be for you.

Use a 32-bit HandBrake

This might be the "somewhat officially recommended approach" because VLC did have a 64-bit release (see below), but the 64-bit project has been scrubbed until further notice. You'll still get brilliant rips, and with the improvements in 0.9.4, the size will be some smaller and the times still somewhat better than previously.

Use Fairmount

The Fairmount utility also uses VLC to do the DVD decrypting, but then mounts the decrypted image. So HandBrake doesn't need to use VLC to do the decrypting because the image is decrypted already. Lots of people swear by this method, but I've also heard of some issues that I've not duplicated (although I don't use Fairmount normally - I've only tested lightly). For example, supposedly Wall-E won't rip properly because of some wacky anti-piracy stuff they add to it. (By the way, I'm not advocating privacy. We don't rip movies we rent, for example - anything in our library, I can provide the physical media for, unless I've loaned out the physical media - in which case I won't watch the digital copy until I get the media back).

Use a 64-bit VLC

As I mentioned before, there was a 64-bit VLC. The only Mac Intel 64-bit version was 1.0.2, which you can download from here. On a Mac, in order for HandBrake to find the VLC libraries, VLC.app must be installed in /Applications. (Some people put VLC.app in /Applications/VLC, and HandBrake won't be able to find it there). Note that 1.0.2 in 64-bit mode is supposed to have some bugs. So if you use VLC a lot for other stuff, I'd recommend also getting a supported version and dropping it either in Applications in your home directory or somehow else marking it or naming it so that you know it's the right one for day-to-day use.

The last one is the method I've been using, and it works very, very well. There have been no audio sync issues as were common in the past, and it's worked around every copy protection feature I've seen thrown at it. I used this method on a friend's machine to rip Wall-E (for him - he owns the movie) and he said it worked flawlessly. I'm waiting to hear from another friend if his rip of Transformers 2, which is also notorious for having rip issues, worked using this method.

On my MacBook 13" with Core 2 duo 2.4Ghz with 4GB RAM, on most rips, I get close to real-time rips, if not better. (Meaning, for film, I'm getting around 24fps rip and encode at H264).

Working around Groovy/Grape Classloader Issues

2009-12-30T22:48:00.000-05:00

I promise I'll come up with something a little less geeky to post about. It took me so long to find this solution that I figured I'd post it so that if somebody did the right searching for the problem, they'd find the solution here.

Groovy 1.6 (or so) introduced some very cool functionality called Grape. Grape is a Groovy front-end to Ivy, which is a handy dependency management tool, not unlike Maven. (In fact, Ivy can use Maven repositories). With Grape, you can include annotations in your script that will use Ivy to fetch the dependency before the script is executed. When you give the script to somebody, you don't have to give them the dependencies because they'll be downloaded (if necessary) when the script is run.

The classic example is something like this:

@Grab(group='commons-lang',module='commons-lang',version='2.4')
import org.apache.commons.lang.WordUtils

println(WordUtils.capitalize('hello world',' '.toCharArray()))

In Groovy 1.7, the annotations can be attached to import statements, so you don't have to make silly empty classes just to hang an annotation on.

One problem with tricks like these, however, is that Groovy uses lots of different classloaders. And any JDBC driver to be loaded by the DriverManager has to be loaded in the root classloader for the DriverManager to find it. So this won't work:

@Grab(group='mysql',module='mysql-connector-java',version='5.1.10')
import groovy.sql.Sql

sql = Sql.newInstance('jdbc:mysql://localhost/db','admin','admin','com.mysql.jdbc.Driver')

It would download the module, but it would be added to the wrong classloader.

There is a way, however, to have a Grape managed dependency loaded into the root classloader so DriverManager can find it. You can do this with the Grape.grab() method directly as below:

import groovy.grape.Grape
import groovy.sql.Sql

Grape.grab(group:'mysql', module:'mysql-connector-java', version:'5.1.10', classLoader:this.class.classLoader.rootLoader)

sql = Sql.newInstance('jdbc:mysql://localhost/db','admin','admin','com.mysql.jdbc.Driver')

For the folks who stumble upon this who need it, you're welcome. For everybody else, back to more interesting things later.

Happy Birthday Valerie at Home!

2009-12-21T08:54:00.000-05:00

Today is Mrs. At Home's birthday. In honor of said event, I figured I'd share a coupe of my past birthday goofs (I seem to make plenty of them) and tell you why it's an honor to her for me to share those with you.

Mrs. At Home works very hard keeping things in line around the home. During that time, though, she's constantly surrounded by two very inquisitive daughters. She gets some amount of time to talk to other women when they go to field trips, and she occasionally gets to paint or go to crafty type gatherings (did you know Altered Book Club is a craft club, not an Alchemists' Convention?), or just to go spend some time enjoying Chai Tea Latte by herself. But when her birthday rolls around, the one thing she really wants is to spend time having grown-up conversation with other grown-ups.

Arpa

Two years ago, for her birthday, all Mrs. At Home wanted was to go to dinner with some friends of ours. We made the date with the friends, got baby sitters arranged, and had the restaurant picked out. We were going to Arpa (I'm not ashamed to say the name of the place because they're closed now, and if they weren't, you'd need to be aware of this problem). Arpa was a tapas restaurant in Uptown Charlotte that we liked to go to on nice grown-up occasions.

Early that day, I went to their website to make the reservations. Fortunately, they allow you to make the reservations online. So I went to the form, filled it all out, and submitted it. But at the end of the submission process, it simply printed the source code of the submission application, which revealed that it just sent a well-formed email to a reservation system. So I emailed the same well-formatted email to the reservation system. And crossed my fingers. By the afternoon, I had not received an email confirmation, so I called. They didn't open until dinner, so I kept trying. Never got an answer. But I figured with the email I was safe.

That evening, we got all dressed up (Mrs. At Home looked stunning as always), met with our friends, and headed uptown. After finding a good place to park within a block, we all walked over to Arpa. When we got in, they didn't look full at all. I explained that I had a reservation for four. They couldn't find it. I explained what happened, they said they were sorry. There was no room for us there. They said they could seat us at the bar within two hours. So I completely failed to deliver the what Mrs. At Home was looking for.

After Arpa, I think J and I decided to try out another place uptown without a reservation. So we hoofed down that direction. When we got there, they said they had a 90 minute wait at least (this is uptown Charlotte the weekend before Christmas after all). After calling our wives (who stayed behind at Arpa to keep warm) to explain the wait, they said they were already on their way down to where we were because they felt awkward sitting in the entrance of a place that wouldn't let us eat there. When they caught up with us, they were laughing at each other, and obviously excited to tell us something.

V and M: Guess who we saw coming up here?!?
J and I: Who?
V and M: Those....guys. You know!
J and I: Who?
V and M: Those....football guys. You know!
J and I: Who?
V and M: Those....TV football guys. Howie and what's-his-face!
J and I: Oh - Howie Long and Terry Bradhsaw?
V and M: Yeah - and they saw we were trying to figure out who they were, so they laughed at us. They walked right by us.

The Fox NFL team was in Charlotte for the game the following day. And they happened to be wandering around uptown Charlotte. (I'm sure their entourage had Arpa booked for the night). I seem to remember during the game the next day Howie and Terry exclaiming how hot the women in Charlotte are. (Particularly the foxy brunette who couldn't remember who they were besides "those football guys").

Old Stone

This year, much like the others, Mrs. At Home decided she wanted to go to dinner with grownups and have grownup conversation. She also picked the spot - Old Stone in Belmont. I made the arrangements with other friends, who also volunteered the older kids' babysitting services. We all got dressed up and made our way through a bit of a circuitous route to Belmont from Lowell because the Lights in McAdenville had all the Lowell traffic backed up.

Earlier that day, I had decided not to make reservations because twice before I had called ahead, and they said they don't take reservations. From the time we'd been there before, I figured we might have a bit of a wait, but that we could handle it, especially since they didn't take reservations.

When we all got inside, we explained that we needed a table for six. They asked what name the reservation was under. I explained that we hadn't made reservations because I'd called twice before for reservations and they said they don't take them. I was fuming mad. In order to keep from making a fool of myself, I just stepped aside with the little puff of steam coming off the top of my head. Rob heard what was going on, so he went to the hostess and explained that he had called many times before and been told that there were no reservations. The manager walked up and explained the following:

They don't to reservations
Except on weekends
And only for parties of six or more
And the website doesn't say it
And if you call to make reservations, everybody will tell you they don't take reservations
Unless you tell them you're making a reservation for six or more
And he (the manager) happens to be the guy who answers the phone

So the short story here, is, if you have a party of six or more, you can make a reservation if it's on the weekend, and that manager answers the phone, and you tell them you need to make a reservation for six or more (not just that you need to make a reservation, waiting for them to prompt you for the number in your party).

After Rob cleared things up at Old Stone, we just went across the street to Sammy's, then to a local coffee shop. We didn't get to have much conversation at the coffee shop because there was a lady from Atlanta singing there that night. She had a lovely voice, but it wasn't conducive to us having grownup conversation. At the end of it all, it turns out Rob has Country Rock Band, so we went back and played that for a bit - and Mrs. At Home was in heaven - it's the one thing she's ever wanted from Rock Band.

Grace

I tell these stories not to emphasize my inability to make a proper reservation, nor to complain about the ability of restaurants to make a proper reservation, but to explain the grace with which Mrs. At Home handles these situations. She's never complained about the failed attempts. She's never told me that I need to get it right next year. She's never even joked about these things - either to me or with me present with other people. She just doesn't get upset by these things. She handles them very, very gracefully. The same way she handles all my other character flaws.

I love you, Dear. Happy birthday!

Decaffeinated

2009-12-20T17:45:00.000-05:00

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I've given up caffeine for awhile. And if you've asked me in person, you know that the root is the nectar of the modern sloth - Diet Dr. Pepper.

I work mostly from home now, so I sit in the same chair most days, for the largest part of the day. My work day is either chock full of meetings, or a series of five-minute interruptions interrupted by other five-minute interruptions. Between both of those, I often have about 90 seconds between tasks to catch my breath. One of the easiest things to do is to fetch a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge. I try to log into work before 7:30 or so, when there are few interruptions. At that time of day, once I've gone through emails once, I usually have enough time to make a cup of coffee to get the brain going.

I've calculated that I drink about 6 cans of Diet Dr. Pepper a day. Some days, I'll drink more. If I have coffee, I'll have one before lunch, one at lunch, one or two in the afternoon, one with dinner, and probably one more in there somewhere - but not enjoyed - just chugged. Since I don't have room next to the desk for a dialysis machine, I decided I needed to give up the Diet Dr. Pepper before my kidneys erupt. I also knew that if I had even a bit of caffeine, my brain would think "Diet Dr. Pepper has caffeine. And it's so much easier."

So abut 10 days ago, I gave up caffeine cold turkey. Yes, I could have coffee, but I haven't because I know that might be the beginning of the end. I could have had Caffeine Free Diet Dr. Pepper, but then I'd miss the real benefit of giving up carbonated drinks.

In that 10 days, I've developed the ability to regularly wake up in the middle of the night. I don't get to sleep any easier at bedtime. I don't sleep any later in the mornings. I don't feel any less lethargic in the afternoon. And I've had a constant headache for most of that 10 days. In short, I don't feel any better yet for having given it up.

Is that all the addict in me speaking? Is there any real health benefit in giving up 72 ounces of pop a day and replacing largely with water? Is there any health benefit in giving up all caffeine? (Of course, a friend posted a long list of health benefits for that first cup of coffee in the morning during this time, too). Should I persevere knowing that somewhere in here is a health benefit and the ability to not be chained down to it? Should I continue on knowing that I'm saving somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 a week in cans alone (not to mention anything I might have dining out)? Or should I just give up and go back? It's hard to imagine that I'd be disciplined enough to limit myself to one or two a day.

Economics 102

2009-12-17T19:01:00.000-05:00

I ended up getting in a bit of a shouting match with some friends on Twitter, and 140-character jabs just wasn't doing it.

I call this Economics 102, because it's the thing you don't learn in elementary school about the economy, but should. Certainly, you have to understand supply and demand, but this is also important information.

Most people agree that when the Fed cuts interest rates, it can have a stimulating effect on the economy. There's more money to go around, so more money gets spent, so more goods are produced, and more people have work. The negative effect, however, is that it can over-stimulate the economy by putting too much money into the economy, which means inflation - because there's more money in the economy, product prices have to go higher to match the money supply. Dealing with the discount rate is sensitive business.

Now to the economics 102....

Banks make money by two different means. First, they charge fees for performing financial transactions. The second way they make money is to charge interest on loans they make to customers. Banks cannot stay afloat on service charges alone, nor can they stay afloat on interest alone - they need both forms of income. Banks, contrary to popular belief, are also businesses - which means like other businesses, they have expenses. They make profit by making more revenue (either service revenue or interest revenue) than they book in expenses. Simple enough?

Now, when money is "cheapened" and there's inflation, that impacts banks as well. They have to pay for computers, paper, water, and electricity, just like any other business. So they have to come up with that money somehow. As we've established, they make money by two different means: service charges for financial services, and interest. In order to cover their own expenses, banks have to make more interest revenue when expenses go up. There are three ways for them to increase interest revenue:

Higher markups on interest rates
Making larger loans
Making more loans at more moderate markup

In a time of low discount rates, the first is not possible. Banks are not monopolies, and so have to compete with other banks. So they have to respond to competition rates. Some banks are able to be successful in spite of having slightly higher interest rates than their competitors, but no bank can survive on substantially higher interest rates for financial instruments than their competitors.

In times of inflation, the second option is a non-option. Because prices have gone up on consumer goods as well, people have less money to spend on homes (which is the biggest area of focus here).

So many banks have to settle for the third option - making more loans at reasonable markup. They have to make reasonable loans to a whole bunch more people than they would if interest rates were high (and their markup could be higher or they could make bigger loans because money isn't "cheap")

Another factor in banks making money is that originating lenders (the company that makes a mortgage in the first place) makes some amount of money on interest, and some amount of money on services at closing. For a traditional mortgage, more money is paid on the interest early on the loan than at the end. If you have a mortgage, you can see this on your mortgage statement - a very large percentage of your early payments go to cover interest, and your very last payment, you pay no interest - it's all principal. In order for banks to free up capital to make new loans, banks will sell mortgages to secondary lenders - like Fannie and Freddie.

Now, certainly the current financial crisis has some to do with banks making subprime mortgages. (That's a fancy word for "home loans for people who simply can't afford to repay them") Mortgage companies did really dumb things to get mortgages made like no interest loans, ARM's, etc. And people who couldn't afford homes bought homes. This was accelerated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who bought the loans that some banks were stupid enough to make, and some consumers were misguided enough to take. If there weren't secondary markets stupid enough to buy stupid loans, some banks wouldn't have made the stupid loans in the first place. Of course had every consumer exercised prudence in taking the loans (or there weren't so many shady salespeople talking about how great an interest-only loan is), banks wouldn't have been able to make the loans in the first place.

So in the end, the current financial crisis was caused by a number of factors. The Federal Reserve continually lowering the discount rate is a part of that problem. Another factor in this, however, is taxes. The best way to stimulate the economy is to put money into it. That can be done by making money cheaper, which is what the Fed is able to control, the other is to leave the money in taxpayers' pockets to begin with - that's the government's responsibility. And no - giving me back $200 of my own money every two years isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about reducing government bloat and overhead, cutting some programs, and letting people decide how to handle their own money.

Big Savings

2009-12-06T20:25:00.000-05:00

If you're like most people these days, you might be looking for ways to save a little money. Or you might be looking to save a little time. Or maybe a lot of both. I had a productive "savings" trip to the grocery store yesterday, so I thought I'd share some tips.

First, if you buy it, but don't use it, you didn't save anything.

Next, if you buy it, but don't need it, you didn't save anything. For example, when coffee pots go on sale for buy one, get twenty free, you didn't save any money whatsoever if you didn't need 21 coffee pots. A friend often tells me that if you didn't wake up this morning thinking you need the item, you probably don't need it. (I disagree. I didn't wake up this morning thinking I need shower soap, but I will soon need it).

Now for the real tip. If you're so fortunate as to have a warehouse store (such as Sam's, Costco, or BJ's) nearby, find a friend who has a membership and take a trip with them sometime to do some pre-shopping. We're very fortunate to live in a location that has all three. A couple of years ago, some friends of ours took us to BJ's, and on the trip, I noticed a couple of good things we liked about BJ's. First, the groceries they have are not in ridiculously-large sizes (see tip number 1) - they're larger than at the grocery store, but not offensively large. Second, they have more groceries than furniture and electronics (see tip number 2). As an added bonus, their membership is cheaper than Costco's and Sam's (at the time it was).

On yesterday's trip for getting our "regular" items, I realized our membership had expired. It was an unplanned expense to have to pay it again, but as I recalled from previous comparison shopping times, it was going to be worth it. I spent $215 on groceries yesterday (including the $45 for the membership fee), which was quite a bit, so I decided to actually price everything once I got home to make myself feel better.

I did my price comparison by using, as much as possible, the same brand of item if it was one where I'm pretty picky about the brand. Otherwise, I would price compare to the cheap house brand. For all items at the normal grocery store, I took the price that gave the lowest per-unit cost. Then I calculated the grocery store price multiplied out to the BJ's price. So I took (grocery store price) / (grocery store units) * (BJ's units).

At the end of it all, I would have spent $269 at the grocery store buying the same amount of groceries. There were only three items that would have been cheaper at their regular grocery store prices (lesson learned) than I paid at BJ's. If you take out the $45 I spent on the membership, I would have saved nearly $100 on the trip - 33% savings. And I didn't use a single coupon.

For many folks, they're able to pick up the Sunday paper, clip coupons, and have enough storage space and chest freezers to jump on super good deals when they're around. We don't have a second fridge, and not a tremendous amount of storage space. So this method works for us for getting our "regular" items - the things we eat when we don't have a particular plan or need something quick. BJ's also carries name brand stuff, so you don't have to get oddball brand things for most items (although they also have their own house brand for many items as well). No - we're not able to get 100% of our groceries at the warehouse store. But for those staples we have to have a continuous supply of, the savings are substantial - and without coupons and having to drive to three different stores and wait for it to go on sale.

My only problem is they don't carry Peter Pan. Only Jiff. For Peter Pan, I'm willing to go to the grocery store and pay a bit more. We make it up in other savings.

Why I Hate Pop Music

2009-11-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

Let me preface this by saying that I don't blog for a living. I don't spend all my time blogging, so before you complain about the quality control issues, keep that in mind.

Most pop music grates on my nerves. Certainly some of it has catchy tunes, and I might even enjoy a few of the songs. But all of it frustrates me.

Consider your own job. How much time a day or week do you spend at your job? And how much time that you're not doing your job directly are you doing things that make you better at your job? Now, for the typical pop musician, put yourself in their shoes. In the amount of time they have per week to devote to their craft, do you really think the quality of their music should be that low?

The reason I love to watch professional baseball, even minor league, is because of how routine everything looks. These guys have played the game their whole lives. Making split-second decisions are absolutely second nature to them - to the point that they're not making decisions, they're just reacting. There are some athletes who are absolute freaks - Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps come to mind. God crafted their bodies differently than most people. But golf is frustrating because nobody can compete with Tiger Woods. I admire Tiger because he practices his game non-stop. But why does nobody else practice like that? Why does nobody else condition their bodies to be able to compete at every single tournament at an extremely high level? Every basketball player should be as good as Michael Jordan was.

So translate the sports questions to music now. I'm not just complaining about the performing, but the composition as well. I've thought for quite some time about writing a program to write pop tunes - because it is really that programmatic and formulaic. Yes - most of what you hear on top 40 radio stations could have been composed by a machine and not a person. I suppose Steve Jobs was right. (I'm paraphrasing here). He once said that before we complain about the garbage that's on television, remember who they're selling the garbage to - the reason they sell garbage is because we love to buy it.

Now translate all this to your own profession. I don't care if you're guiding satellite re-entries or if you drive a bus. Do you take enough pride in your work to try to get better and better at it every day you work? And for Christ-followers, do people see your work and glorify God because of the quality of your work? I'm thankful for the skill of the surgeon who did heart surgery on L. But he's no different from anybody else - he had to spend many, many, many hours honing those skills. When you're at work, are you actively trying to do your job better? And when you're not at work, are you spending any time thinking how to apply other lessons learned to your job?

Super Easy Recipes: Baked Potato Soup

2009-11-27T20:03:00.000-05:00

I like to dabble in the kitchen. I have a few deep dark family secret recipes locked up in my brain that I managed to get by social engineering (read: Digsibes did not give me the recipe for her lasagna. I make a cheap imitation that I figured out mostly on my own (and by watching her put together enough of them). But there are others that I made up off the cuff that just are drop-dead simple. Some of them are my favorites.

Note that as I do these, I won't be giving traditional measurements. After all, how big is a potato?

6-7 potatoes - peeled and diced
Chicken or vegetable stock (I used turkey stock I had made from turkeys Jinksto had made over at Bubba's).
Sour cream
Sharp cheddar cheese, grated (the sharper the better)
Green onions, chopped
Bacon, crumbled
Kosher salt
Black pepper, fresh ground

Ideally, you'd start by cooking an onion in olive oil until translucent. Somehow, we ran out of onions. It was good anyway

Add the potatoes, salt and pepper, and enough stock to cover the potatoes by 1". Bring the stock to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer until the potatoes are soft-ish. (You don't want them to completely fall apart.) Remove from heat, and add a big spoonful of sour cream and about half a cup of the cheddar cheese. Stir in slowly.

Serve topped with green onions, more cheddar cheese, bacon, and a little dab of sour cream.

Angry Rant about "Evolved Males"

2009-11-02T22:20:00.000-05:00

So I read this article in the Charlotte Observer about how Roy Williams (head basketball coach of the Tarheels Men) has "evolved". And what are the character traits of an "evolved male" according to this author, you may ask? That he's able to "get in touch with his feminine side", that he's able to have feelings and express those, and that he carries his wife's purse.

Regarding the first, I have no clue what that means.

Regarding the last, I avoid it at all costs. I don't like to look for things in my wife's purse. We share everything - we have no secrets. But what's in her purse is none of my business. My rule - not hers.

Regarding the second - make no mistake about it - having and expressing feelings is not a characteristic of an evolved male. If feelings have anything to do with the measure of a man, it's only insofar as a male is able to suck it up and do what needs to be done despite his feelings. A man who's depressed with his work either finds other work or stops being depressed and continues doing the work necessary to support his family. A man who is not "in love" with his wife forgets about being infatuated and loves his wife anyway. A man who doesn't like attacks against his family defends his family.

Then there's a rant about his parents. Twice in my life I've been to counseling for different issues. Both times, I was asked if my parents had the same behavior I was in counseling for. In both cases, I responded the same: "what have my parents got to do with my behavior? They're not responsible for my behavior - I am." Both counseling series ended on the day I made that statement - at the counselor's recommendation. When a man stops blaming his stupidity on his parents is the day he doesn't need counseling anymore.

I'm not implying men shouldn't have feelings. I'm stating that there are things in this life that a man has to do - work to support his family (or spend his time looking for work to support his family), love his wife as Christ loved the church, not provoke his children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and defend his family. And these he must do in spite of his feelings. If his feelings are not conducive to doing these things, he needs to change how he feels. And for crying out loud - men don't blame their parents for their behavior. Take a stand, be accountable, and admit culpability for stupid mistakes.

Sorry Miss Powell. If those three criteria are what it takes to be a real man in your circles, your circles' standards are far too low.

Apple on the Ropes

2009-10-25T17:34:00.000-04:00

I received this video from my friend Smokus (or you can check him out on Twitter.

It's clear that after a dismal third quarter, that Apple is playing catch-up with Microsoft. I received this video of a Microsoft store, and while I've never visited one, I did get a chance to go to my local Apple store afterward. It's very clear that Apple is copying Microsoft with their so-called "Apple Store". From their hardwood floors, to their minimalist decor, to the screens on the plain white walls, to the black tables lined perfectly with beautiful hardware. Apple does switch it up a bit - their so-called "geniuses" (Microsoft's are "gurus") wear pastel colored tee shirts instead of primary colors. But they do wear lanyards with little ID badges, just like the Microsoft store.

What's next? Will Apple start selling hardware and software that work seamlessly together just like Microsoft? Will the Apple store "geniuses" act all snooty to their customers just like Microsoft? Will it stop there? Will Apple start selling a hand-held device that not only plays music but also shows videos just like the Zune? Will they add Chess with custom boards to their operating system? I hear they added a Trash Can to compete with Microsoft's Recycle Bin. Will it go to the ultimate copy-cat operation?

When will it end? Will we finally see the normally serene Steve Jobs lose all control of bodily functions and begin screaming at customers?

Yes - I broke the stinking lamp and I'm sorry

2009-10-08T15:51:00.000-04:00

My friend - er - he considers me an ex-friend now - was kind enough to give me a tour of some of the Bay area once when I was on a trip out that direction.

It was a great trip. He showed me all the expensive little cities connected by the expensive highway where people crash their expensive cars (without insurance) then start lawsuits. He took me by his place because he had just moved in and wanted to show me the neighborhood. As we were walking through his place, it was clear that he was just moving in.

This is the guy who moved to Charlotte with his car, his bicycle, his computer, the clothes on his back, and a bowl. Evidently the "no person should have more than 120 possessions" rule fades away after a few years' residency in Charlotte, because he had a more average amount of stuff. Since he had just moved in (like 6 months prior), he was still, understandably, living mostly from boxes (his bowl was unpacked). And the lamp.

I was very careful walking through his house not to knock things over that were sitting on the floor.

This next part happened exactly as I remember it:
FD (my friend - er - acquaintance who might one day again consider me "friend") opened the patio door and slid out. As he walked out, I noticed an extremely expensive looking, quite fragile lamp on the floor next to the door. I thought to myself "boy - I don't want to break that". I approached the door and was going to slide it open a bit further (I'm fat, you see) and as I touched the patio door handle, the lamp exploded. I didn't touch it. I'm a klutz, but I was very specifically avoiding the lamp. But it exploded. It exploded when I slid the door with my hand when I approached the door. I broke the lamp. And I'm sorry.

Every time we talk, FD reminds me how much he loved the lamp. He reminds me how he traded the paddle game, the chair, the matches, and the thermos for that lamp. He reminds me that the lamp tied the room together.

FD - I'm sorry I broke your lamp.

Making Repeat Customers

2009-09-18T15:25:00.000-04:00

You often hear grownups - particularly men - make statements about having children in order that they can relive their childhood years - living vicariously through their sports accomplishments, or more often, playing with their toys.

McDonald's has this nailed. L had gotten a carton of milk the other day. There was a code on it. It said something like "redeem this code to give your avatar +10 stength on McWorld". I mean, how much more obvious could it be that they wanted grown men who have "outgrown" all the teenagers on World of Warcraft to be involved in their children's MMORPG exploits?

I expect them to truly capitalize on this, creating buffs for all their foods, making a whole new line of product wrapping:

Big Mac of Great Defense
Consumer gets +10 STR, +3 DEF, -1 INT for 50 minutes.

Chicken Nugget of Fear
Spell: target MOB gets -8 CHA for 1 turn.

Salad of Pure Energy
Enchantment: target gets +8 INT for 1 hour.

Then there could be a whole black market for soiled Quarter Pounder wrappers - you could exchange ISK for McWorld buffs, then guys would have 4 VM's per CPU, 20 CPU's in their garage leveling their players to turn around and sell. (Incidentally, I did look briefly at McWorld, and they do use a lot of MMO terminology - you first have to select a server, then a zone).

Don't (kernel) Panic

2009-09-17T12:24:00.000-04:00

In one of my feeds, I saw that article go by, and I read it. I wanted to comment on it because it's not as borked as it looks, but the comments are closed.

If you have an HP scanner (others might also apply), and you've upgraded to Snow Leopard, chances are the HP bloatware you got with your scanner is not working properly - probably says that it can't communicate with the scanner. The printer still works fine using the built-in CUPS drivers - both locally and over Bounjour.

Don't go to HP to download the software again. It still won't work. The good news is that you no longer have to download the 200MB of HP bloatware to make your scanner/copier/printer work anymore. Now there are built-in Twain drivers for HP scanners that work flawlessly over Bonjour even.

Just go to Applications and run Image Capture. Your scanner will be there. You can use Image Capture to import to a file or any application of your choosing. You can even perform multiple scans in a single pass - a feature I used heavily when scanning photos that were glued to a scrapbook page - just select the regions you want to scan (be sure to delete any existing selections before you start adding to the selections).

And yes - this is vastly superior to the way it was before when you had to install some proprietary HP bloatware that you only used for running the scanner. And it would only import pictures directly to its on proprietary applications. Snow Leopard has reduced my rage against HP considerably.

You're welcome.

When in NC...

2009-09-16T15:11:00.006-04:00

This one is short...

I've had bad-ish headaches much of my life. The one medicine I've found that seems to work a large part of the time is Goody's. I was running low one day and went to the local drug store to pick some up. There's an older gentleman in the same section of the store looking through things. As I found the Goody's and picked one up, the conversation went like this:

Him: Richard Petty
Me: Huh?
Him: Richard Petty
Me: I'm sorry, I think you've got me confused with somebody else
Him: No - the driver. Don't you know....nevermind. Richard Petty is a NASCAR driver - he uses Goody's.

If I see somebody get a Sprite from a vending machine, and say to them "Grant Hill", do you think they'll get it? Is this normal in other parts of the country - when you see somebody pick up a product, mention the name of somebody who endorses the product? I mean, would anybody be happy that I mentioned Sally Field if they picked up a bottle of Boniva (I have no idea if you can buy a bottle of Boniva or not)?

Changing My Name

2009-09-15T12:09:00.000-04:00

It seems like a good time of year to change my name. Seeing how He Hate Me and Ocho Cinco are already taken, and I don't want to change my name to an un-pronounceable symbol, I'm kinda' open to suggestions. I hear Dot Com Guy changed his name back, so....

Why the change?

Will used to be a very uncommon name. As I was growing up, I was the only Will I knew. I eventually met a Billy when I got into high school - and by that time he went by Bill. As I've gotten older, there have been a few other Bill's that I've known. But still, very few Will's. All my life, if I hear somebody call the name "Will", I've known they were talking to me.

So without further ado, the reasons for the change:

Will is a verb and a noun
There's a common IM tool at work that allows group discussion as well. Many people, in order to reduce the noise level, disable constant alerts from it and write "vanity filters" so that when somebody mentions their name, the tool will alert them. Since I'm known as "Will", my vanity filter fires for things like:
"When will the service be available?"
"Must be the Lord's will"

It's so unusual, nobody gets it right
As if my surname wasn't complex enough for many people (I'm not implying it's generally complex - just seems that few people are able to read), Will is unusual enough of a given name that people assume it's wrong. I clearly sign emails to people I'm communicating with for the first time as Will. When on phone conversations, I announce by my name, and if asked from an invite list, I politely correct people who refer to me by other names. But I still get emails (and phone calls) - particularly from vendors - that say things like:
"Bill:"
"Billy:"
"Billy! How's it shakin'!"
"Will...is that short for William or Bill?"
"I see your address is william - I assume you go by Bill"
Yes - these are all real - and I'm not joking, including the fourth. There are lots of ways to shorten William. Many go by William. Some Bill. Some Will. Some Wil. Some Liam. Ask somebody before you shorten their name. In general, call somebody by the name you were introduced to them by, unless they specify otherwise. (Mrs. At Home gets a lot of people, not including me, call her by the first syllable of her first name. It drives her nuts, but she's too polite to correct people. I'm not. So if you do it, don't.)

I work near another Will
There's another Will on a sister team to the one I work on. He's more important than I am. Our surnames sound nothing alike, but I get emails that were supposed to be for him all the time. On calls, if others hear that Will is on the call, they assume the more important Will is on the call, so I get lots of questions that I can't answer. Our paths cross quite a bit, and I need to do some amount of work with him, so the name change would make that a little less ambiguous.

It's becoming a popular name
And the coup de gras is that Will is becoming a very popular name for boys now. And between church, softball, and other places, there are enough boys around named Will that it's often confusing. To boot, they're always in trouble.
"Will! Drop that this instant!" (Let's hope I'm not carrying dinner at the time).
"Will! Get over here!"
"Will! Stop it right now!"
(There's a strange segue here - many of the scolds I hear are from relatively strict parents. Good to see that discipline and correction are coming back around. Let's hope these kids make it into the workforce soon.)

So there you go. Probably not sufficient enough justification to dishonor my parents and my namesake as well as inconvenience the people who know me well enough to call me Will, but the list is getting pretty long of good reasons to switch. For now, I'll stay as Will until I can come up with something really catchy. Thinking Earl might be creeping up the list of potentials...

9-11

2009-09-11T11:00:00.000-04:00

I had a really long post about 9-11 I was going to put together, but decided it would bore you. This one is a much better list.

On 2001-09-11

I learned that my boss wasn't joking about an ariplane crashing into a building
I learned for the first time I can't protect my girls 24x7
I remembered that I tend to work in times of shock
I learned that some friends of ours lost their baby who was due on 9-18
I learned that our economy comes to a standstill when transportation does
I spent some of the sweetest time with other friends praying for and grieving for our friends
I spent some of the sweetest time with my church praying for and grieving for our country
I spent some of the sweetest time praying for a new church plant in NYC that would begin six months earlier than expected because of these events

On 2009-09-11

I remembered that my boss wasn't joking and I've been awake the whole time
I'm still bothered by the fact that I can't protect my girls 24x7
I'm bothered by the fact that I need to stay here and work because I can't really provide anything useful to my wife's family right now
I'm spending time in prayer for my wife's family while they struggle through something that's expected and yet not expected
I'm overjoyed that some other friends of ours have learned they're having a girl

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."