Single Dad in Carlsbad

Not sure where to start...

2006-06-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

So much has happened since my last post, I don't know where to start...

I am tempted to rant about things I've been through but it seems more cathartic and more healing to just tell it like it happened. I need to reach a place where I can just deal with the things I must deal with and not let it get me down.

I have always been determined to do "the right thing." But I've certainly had my share of misconceptions about how to go about it, and I've made some truly massive mistakes along the way. Did I ever say otherwise? Whack me if I did...

Flew out for divorce trial. Lots of lies and vindictiveness. 2 days in jail (the other side asked for 4 months). Way more than I can afford in payments.

Through it all I thought about my teenagers and how could I finish the job of trying to teach them to take responsibility for their actions. Someone else is making every effort to teach them how to avoid taking responsibility by playing the victim role. More on that later.

I will not give up. I will not back down. I will not bow my head to systematic misrepresentation. Lies told often enough are accepted as the truth, Himmler said. Lies told cleverly enough make the person who objects seem to be the bad guy. I refuse to give up. The story must be told.

Life hangs precariously. Some things which were hanging over my head are out in the open and I just need to remind myself not to worry about them. Other problems loom large in front of me. Have faith and remember, we never get a test we can't pass but sometimes we have to let go of excess baggage. Mine has usually come in the form of wishful thinking.

Ideas are powerful, more powerful than money, more powerful than governments and courts and armies. I have ideas, and they are positive ones. The truth will prevail ultimately.

Hoping for a downward trend...

2006-05-17T05:50:00.000-07:00

OK, still pitiful, 14:22...
I walked 2 miles during lunch Monday. I'm sure that burned some calories but then I undid it with a Starbucks Blackberry Green Tea Frappucino. Yeah. They put a lot of sugar in those things. But it was good...

I miss having discussions on biological psychology with Ramani. Have to get in touch with her and see what she's up to. Probably busy studying...

More on biological psychology to come...

Task switching - stack overflow

2006-05-16T06:51:00.000-07:00

Since the 80386 processor (and before) computers have had built-in capabilities to handle multiple tasks. All of the registers and variables involved are put aside safely and quickly, and the computer switches to another task, picking up all its registers and variables quickly and immediately adjusting to the new task's memory and environment.

Humans don't do it that easily, or rather, the stack we have for handling transitions between multiple complex tasks is limited. Plus the overhead involved in switching tasks represents a drain which some people handle better than others.

The level of absorption required for tasks involving mathematical reasoning and deep thought seems to make task-switching much more difficult than more "natural" things like folding clothes while watching TV, or talking while cooking. I don't have any problem cooking five or six things at once and going from one thing to the next, in quantities for 500 or more people, but when I'm working on a software problem it can be very hard to handle the distraction of someone asking a simple question.

The analogy I like to give is one of juggling. If someone is juggling and has 20 balls up in the air and you ask them to stop for just one second to give you a hand, they can stop quickly. But resuming the juggling act takes time - you don't just throw all 20 balls back up at once. You start with one, then two, then three and so on. If it happens often enough or frequently enough you might be discouraged from starting again.

That's how it feels sometimes...

What is REALLY sad..

2006-05-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

OK, depression is not sad, it's just a temporary state...
What's really sad is taking 15 minutes to run 1.3 hilly miles.
Now that is sad.. but something I can work on.
OK, I couldn't run up all the hills.
Very nice views up here. Plus I saw a bunny wabbit. More bunnies and kittens and puppies and you name it at http://cuteoverload.com

Overload again...

2006-05-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Depression...
It hits me like a load of black sand, wants to bury me. I feel suffocated and the voices of others are words coming out of mouths that cannot be heard.
I need to get over this. I can't handle being depressed right now. There's too much to do.
Does anybody care? Probably not. But it feels good to say it...

Death of a bunny

2006-04-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

Janaki Salad died last night. I first noticed something was wrong Monday night when she didn't eat. She loved celery and the two stalks I had given her that morning were untouched. She would usually romp around my room but this time she just found a place to sit and didn't move.

I made an appointment for the vet but couldn't get one until this afternoon. She didn't last that long. She was wheezing last night. She hopped around the room once or twice after the lights were out, then lay down under my desk. When I got up at 2am, that's where I found her.

She was the only thing soft and cuddly I've had within reach for a long time and I'll miss her.

Killer bunnies from outer space

2006-04-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

Opening scene: talk show discusses the ludicrosity (wait! that's not a real word! who cares???) of an invasion of killer bunnies.

Talk show is interrupted by a news bulletin.

Cut to the evil General McCaw giving orders to the invasion strike force leader Commander Cuddles (pictured at right).

Then it's all over but the screaming...

Coming soon to a download site near you...

Rough weather hopefully behind...

2006-04-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

OK, there are some stories I haven't been telling. Some may have to wait until May.
But mostly I haven't been keeping up to date because I'm lazy. That's right, you guessed it.

Saw a very interesting National Geographic show last night on "The Gospel of Judas." Whoooo boy - despite the careful approach they took with scholars dished up with more scholars, I'm sure some people will take exception to to any boat-rocking of belief systems.

I think the healthiest approach to dialectical spiritualism is to accept that spirituality (or professed lack of it) is a manner of self-expression. Everyone doesn't have to express themselves the same way (unless you have a really totalitarian approach to things).

Anyway it piqued my interest in diving into Gnostic teachings a little more. As a non-Christian in a very occasionally belligerently Christian country, I identify heavily with Jesus and his teachings - though in a way that many "in the mainstream" would not agree with.

The part I found most interesting is the idea that there is a spark of divinity within each of us, which runs somewhat contrary to an idea circulated by many who claim that a central tenet of Christianity is that since the fall of Adam and Eve, we are all inherently sinful and without redemption have no hope.

But there's a different approach to that discussion which I'll save for another day...

Too much to do, too little time...

2006-03-15T10:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was rough. Just couldn't get moving, mentally and emotionally. Sometimes you reach those points where you feel overwhelmed by all the things you're NOT doing.

Couldn't really connect to anyone to talk about it - it turned into an argument about why I'm not really being negative. There is quite a lot that gives me happiness, and I've figured out how to make all those things that make me happy also ones that don't cost anything (or cost very little).

The pressure of knowing that I'll be spending tens of thousands of dollars in a pointless legal battle is killing me. Is this really civilized?

What's killing me are all the things I need to be doing but can't make time for, and the little bits and pieces of leisure time I get wedged in between all the other demands just don't really make up for it.

This is just a random pain noise and it will fade into the past as I move on...

Back to school

2006-03-08T05:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was "day with a student" day at my daughter's high school. I was really appreciative of the opportunity to be involved in her education. They should provide more such opportunities. They basically shortened all the class schedules so the whole thing was done by 12:30 - it's much easier to get half the day off work than the whole day.

I found two things sad:
1. There was such a sad parent turnout - in some classes I was one of only 3 to 5 parents - just a little over 10%. Of course my daughter and her friend Martha joked about hiding the letters. Teenage years are usually when parents perpetually embarass their offspring. But we know the reason parents didn't come - it just was too much. I know some of them have worse situations than me and really struggle to make ends meet, but most of the Cadillac Escalade crowd wouldn't have such a good excuse.
2. The way students behave. Some of them just don't belong in school. I think the thing I was proudest of with my daughter was to see how she made friends amongst others who are serious about going on to college. Sadly, that was far too few of the students.

She has done so well and I am so proud of her. I want to see her keep moving forward and get admitted to a good university next year. UCSD, Columbia, Yale, Princeton..

Sleep deprivation...

2006-02-28T19:46:00.000-08:00

Life is sometimes not as simple as two tetrahedra joined together. People join together for many reasons and for other reasons they sometimes split apart.

So why does the splitting apart bit always have to be so difficult, and why does the process have to be so expensive when one of the people doesn't want to cooperate?

Seems to me that it's just a form of slavery when we allow one person to make it difficult for another to walk out of a relationship, especially when the impetus for walking out is that person being intolerably difficult.

I'm still trying to catch up on sleep...

Occam's Razor Isn't Always the Sharpest Knife In the Drawer

2006-02-13T18:34:00.000-08:00

Ha.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not down on the scientific approach.
In fact, my livelihood is based on a scientific approach - but engineering vs. science is another topic...

Occam's Razor states that when there are multiple possible explanations, we should lean toward the simplest one. This is usually a reasonably good approach when it comes to correlating empiric data with possible underlying models. Furthermore, it is a useful approach in finding experiments which will prove a given hypothesis with the least effort. It allows us to discard a lot of crap fairly early on, because sometimes good science involves starting with nothing but a hunch and finding results via experimentation. Sometimes the results are totally unrelated to the hypothesis the experiments were developed to prove.

However, when the hypothesis lies outside the realm of easily provable phenomena, an overly zealous adherence to Occam's Razor leads to discarding theories and even direct physical evidence which just doesn't fit in a neat, orderly model of reality.

This bothers me because I feel there is a lot more to this world than what is observable with currently known instruments. Such instruments are, in fact, extensions of physical senses (some pedantist will argue that humans are unlike electric eels and do not posess the ability to sense minute electric charges, or are unlike pigeons in lacking a proven ability to sense the exact alignment of the Earth's magnetic field, but I'll just thumb my nose at the wags and continue). I argue that in fact there are other senses such as feeling and intuition, which are valid albeit not as easily amplified or proven. Feelings as in emotions are well-studied through psychology, sociology, and other behavioral sciences... but here I am talking about feelings as in intuition.

Furthermore, these sensory abilities vary considerably between individuals, unlike better known abilities such as eyesight and hearing which mostly fit a fairly well-known pattern.

This is just one small example. Science is indeed catching up to things that were previously considered outside the realm of science. The convergence is happening, just a bit slowly...

More later.

Cowle's Peak

2006-02-12T17:39:00.000-08:00

This is what I'd call a nice short hike. 1.4 miles and 1000 feet up for the best view in the city of San Diego.

That felt good! It's been way too long since I did a decent hill climb!
Next time, Iron Mountain! AND I remember to bring my poetry notebook!

And I had to slack off and take a break part of the way up.

But you have to admit, the view is worth it, and how could I resist stopping every few hundred meters to take some pictures?

Finally, views from the summit:

And finally the trip back down...

More pics at my website http://henrygroover.net/photos/

Info on the history of the area: http://historyandculture.com/writings/cowles.html

See ya!

Root canal - the sequel

2006-02-10T13:45:00.000-08:00

OK, so root canal round 2 was a bit more like what I thought root canal was going to be like. But I think this doctor, Babrak Shoushtari, is really really good. I hope I don't have to see him again but if I needed an endodontist I would definitely go see him again.

The temporary filling came out, some drilling, lots of reaming out the canal, both with a rotary thing, and with various needle-tipped instruments, inspection with a microscope, digital x-rays, and finally relief in the form of hot rubber fillings. did I mention numerous irrigations with solutions including sodium hypochlorite, a.k.a. bleach? Well, thankfully there was a rubber dam installed in my mouth so I didn't have to swallow any of that stuff...

Now try to say "fluffy bunnies" with your mouth all numbed up... go on...

General tooth and cavity info:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/cavity.htm

Root canal info (with animations):
http://www.animated-teeth.com/root_canal/t1_root_canal.htm

A bird in the hand...

2006-02-07T04:39:00.000-08:00

Let's start with the bush part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgTevNMMuFI
oh gawd I can't believe this guy... The best part was "fool me once uh... uh... uh... (look stupid during pregnant pause)"

And birds. I saw a hawk perched on a street light outside my workplace being harassed by a crow. The crow kept divebombing the poor bird of prey until it finally flew away

We've had dense fog in the mornings lately. I'll have to stop and get pictures...

Victimhood sucks

2006-02-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

My goals for my children have gotten more focused, a bit more grounded in reality (so I'd like to believe), and more practical. They are:

Get them through college and at least a bachelor's degree. It's more than life is a struggle when you know things but don't have that degree - when you're young you have the chance to spend a few years focusing on education, and you'd damn well better take it while you have the chance before the raging currents of life sweep you away!
Try to instill some good habits, good hygiene, people skills and other useful things... and
Show them that there are alternatives to victimhood.

What we get from our parents imprints itself deep upon our psyche in a way that is hard to escape, even when we are conscious of it. We may "hate" one or both of our parents for things we decided long ago we couldn't stand. We may deliberately set ourselves up to be the opposite of what we saw our parents as. "Dad was a Democrat, so I'll be Republican." "Mom liked heavy metal, I'll only listen to Mozart." etc.

I would define victimhood as the sense that others are always to blame for your problems. Those who are afflicted with a sense of victimhood rarely think of themselves as irresponsible. Some feel sorry for themselves, sink into depression, and if they get the right kind of help, might pick themselves up and move on. The other type of victimhood I'm familiar with is a self-righteous one which picks up fuel from everyone it comes in contact with. It is very hard to deflate. We'll call this flavor of victimhood PriSI for Pristine Self-righteous Innocent victimhood.

There's not much that can be done for the fully entrenched PriSI victim. The best you can do is not get into playing the rescuer, because whatever you do, it won't be enough. All you'll get is resentment. If a PriSI needs money and you lend them some, it won't be enough. If a PriSI needs a place to stay and you let them stay with you, they'll resent it when you ask them to move on. If you're stupid enough to marry one, they'll go out of their way to make sure you suffer for it when you finally decide to move on and leave them.

The problem with PriSI is that it's infectious and self-covering. Since PriSI sufferers are "empowered" by a sense of the nobility of their own martyrdom, they keep themselves blinded to the defects in the way they deal with others. They have trouble keeping long-term friends because eventually that friend will try to provide feedback on something and will become an ex-friend for daring to suggest that the PriSI person is less than perfect.

But chronic PriSIs are by nature extremely insecure. All that self-righteousness is a desperate attempt to avoid facing the abyss of their own perceived shortcomings. They are often not at all bad people, but they have for one reason or another (perhaps childhood abuse or trauma) worked themselves into a mode of existence where they just cannot cope with any reality.

The problem with those who have been infected with PriSI syndrome is that it is a disempowering approach to life. Blaming others for problems seems to work in the short-term because PriSIs usually become good at emotional blackmail, and are rewarded when others take on the role of rescuer, and will always go one step further to satisfy the PriSI. But in the long term, victimhood does nothing but ensure that we can never live up to our full potential, because it prevents us from taking responsibility for the important choices we make, and holds us back from meaningful friendships and relationships because true love and true friendship require the common ingredient of truth, which cannot exist in the atmosphere of denial and distortion which is necessary to maintain the feeling of totally superior martyrdom.

In short, victimhood sucks...

Zippers and trains...

2006-02-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

I have some theories about traffic flow mostly because, like almost all people living in sunny So. Cal, I spend way too much time stuck in it...

Billions get spent on highway improvements. Mostly this creates massive backups for a few years while construction drags on (for what seems like far too long unless you look at the entire project plan) and then things are finished just in time for traffic flow to get overwhelmed by all the development that has anticipated more people being able to get from point A to point B faster... you get the idea.

But a cheaper way of improving traffic flow is by changing driver behavior. I'm not just talking about the assholes who cut in front of you, taking advantage of your safe following distance, or cut to the front of a line of waiting cars, making traffic back up behind them in another lane while they wait to bogart their way in. The safe, considerate, responsible drivers can also make some small changes that could add up to massive differences. At some point I'm planning to create some software models that can quantify that...

So here they are:

1. The zipper rule.
Traffic merge happens whenever 5 lanes go down to 4 lanes, 4 lanes go down to 3, etc. The zipper rule is simple: one and only one car goes in front of you. Even if 80% of drivers "get it" and follow this rule, merges go faster. And this feeds into #2...

2. The train rule.
When a train starts up, it does so slowly. When a line of traffic is stopped at a light, it also starts slowly. But most drivers wait for space to be created in front of them as if they were driving at least 20 miles per hour. If everyone in line watches the light, and is prepared to begin moving, even if the initial movement is slow, the following distance can increase gradually. I'm talking about a big change, just watch the car in front of you and the car ahead of that one, and prepare to start moving at the same time as the car in front of you. It would be easy to model this and quantify the improvement...

Interesting blog of the day: http://toosmall.blogspot.com/

Another day, another paper model...

2006-02-01T05:32:00.000-08:00

Ha!

Take that, you compound stellated icosahedron!

You thought you would sit there and I'd refuse the temptation to put you together, but you were wrong!

I'm quite pleased with how this one turned out. I was testing a new feature of my Papercut software, which prints out the layout for assembling models like this. Pleasant surprise. Usually matching the tabs up is a pain, but this new version provides some useful hints. I still think it would be a cool party game, provide a group of people (drunk or not) with pieces and see how they do at putting it together.

Next cool thing: dump a big chunk of text and have it fill up all faces in a way that you can read it from top to bottom...

http://paper-model.com is the url in case you were going to ask...

Morning rush hour

2006-01-30T05:24:00.000-08:00

So ok, I've been a complete slacker!
Quick blog entry in the morning is the way to go. Not that there's a lot of free time...

Let's see...

Get up at 4:30, bathe etc.
Catch up on emails
Have some chai with toast
Make sandwiches for everyone's lunch
Drop kids in opposite directions
Drop housemate's kid at her school on the way to work
Battle rush hour to arrive at the office

I'm not whining. I do a lot more than the above. What works for me is a flow. I need to be able to flow quickly from one thing to another. When I get interrupted it breaks the flow and I start dropping things.

I used to cook quite a lot, sometimes for hundreds of people. I could make a feast (all vegetarian, of course ;-) for 300 people in about 4 hours, and that was making 10 or 12 different preparations, including cutting vegetables, etc. etc. I get into a meditative, highly concentrated state where I'm focused on the tasks at hand, and any interruption or distraction just gets the whole train of thought so derailed.

That's it for today. Check out my home page, http://henrygroover.net - that has been another big spare-time project, along with the home page for my software, http://paper-model.com

Back in the habit...

2006-01-12T18:08:00.000-08:00

On the new job for three weeks and it's looking pretty good.
My last post mentioned that I was interviewing. This went fast. Sent off my resume, phone interview, half-day team interview, job offer. Boom, boom, I want you in my room...
Then it was "hasta la vista, baby" at my old job, two weeks notice and here I am. Started in 16 December.
There's a lot to write about and I have a decent camera now to put some pics up...

Something has been bugging me...

2005-12-09T14:27:00.000-08:00

This picture is a little fuzzy.

Why? This guy (a cricket of some sort, but the size of a mouse) is about to go scampering off and hop into a firepit, thereby immolating himself. Or herself... whatever... Anyway, the picture was taken in a hurry.

Just to give you an idea of the scale, these are "normal" sized paving bricks.
Note the "toes" on this critter's feet.

And no, I did *not* do anything to induce the fatal attempt to become Tandoori Cricket. The Mutant Cricket just got too excited, I suppose...
Stay tuned while I try to get this little fella identified...

Long day...

2005-11-24T00:42:00.000-08:00

Busy day today. Had a phone interview for a potentially better job - that was a good note to start on. Not happy with my present job. Why? Underutilized, undervalued, and not doing things that will keep marketable skills sharp. Yep, those are good reasons.

Loneliness is more intense once you've had a relationship and then don't have it. It's so hard not to think about what you had (and no longer have) rather than to think of what you could have in the future. Feeling pretty brokenhearted but at least I have friends.

Tomorrow my oldest daughter comes down to celebrate her birthday. It's actually Friday but she only has tomorrow off. I've been preparing - planning to cook some things tomorrow. She's a good person but we don't have much to say to each other.

Yes, I think you can have family and still be lonely, if you want to have a partner. But it's hard to find the right person, or you may find them and they are not really interested in you. You could always settle for less than complete compatibility but that could end up a real disaster. Better wait.

First post and history...

2005-11-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

I haven't written much in the past several months, although my life has been turned inside out, upside down, and twisted a few times for good measure. I remember other difficult times and how good it was to take a walk in the country, write some poetry, and decompress in solitude...

There's a lot of history to catch up on... I'll try to do that in little bits and pieces. Otherwise it would be soooo boring.