1521 Tour: The Downstairs Powder Room

This post is one of  a series of remembrances of various aspects of my childhood home – 1521 Ninth Street in the Fairview neighborhood of Altoona. My home,  as detailed in RIP - 1521 Ninth Street,  was converted into a handful of spaces in a parking lot last year.

My childhood home featured one-and-a-half baths – a full bath on the second floor and a half-bath on the first floor. As you will see, calling the first floor bathroom a “half-bath” is really pushing the truth boundary. Since using the term “one-eighth bath” is sort of clumsy, I’ll instead refer to the first floor bath as the Downstairs Powder Room.

The distinguishing features for the Downstairs Powder Room were its location and its size. From a location perspective, our  Downstairs Powder Room was located in the Grand Central Station of 1521. It was basically carved out of a corner of the TV Room – the door to the  Downstairs Powder Room couldn’t have been more than 4 feet from where the TV console was positioned. It was bordered on two sides by the TV Room, on one side by the kitchen wall where our “wet bar” was attached, and on the final side by the back porch. Privacy couldn’t have been high on the 1521 architect’s priority list – you were right in the middle of it all there.

Duke – Wake Forest – November 23

I love going to games at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.

BB&T Field is the smallest stadium of the automatic qualifying conferences, seating only  31,500, but every seat is a good one. It is a very manageable 70 miles from my house on interstate highways. Visiting team’s parking is readily available at $8 the day of the game and adjacent to the stadium in the Lawrence Joel Veterans Coliseum, a simple five minute walk.

Absence and the Fonder Heart?

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Long time – no blog.

They say the only thing worse than an uninteresting weblog is one that doesn’t get updated consistently. Guilty Your Honor. I haven’t been feeling particularly creative this whole year. Work has been really hectic as late and the last thing I have felt like doing when I get home is get back behind the keyboard.

The Propane Blues

Loyal weblog readers will recall the episode earlier this year, detailed here, where I executed a not-so-smooth-or-seamless transition from an Automated Propane Delivery Program to a Call On Demand Program. That resulted in the infamous running-out-of-propane on the coldest weekend of the year debacle.

You might be interested to know that about a month after that, the downstairs gas package system gave up the ghost completely – I awoke one early Monday mid-March morning around 3:00 AM to the strong smell of propane. Contrary to Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, propane, unlike napalm, doesn’t smell like victory in the morning.

The last time I had the system checked a couple of years ago, the service technician went through this litany of everything wrong with it, closing with “I am not even sure if I replace any one of those parts that I will be able to get it back up and running again once I take it apart and put it back together”. Ouch.

1521 Tour: Front Porch

This post is the first in a series of remembrances of various aspects of my childhood home – 1521 Ninth Street in the Fairview neighborhood of Altoona. My home,  as detailed in RIP - 1521 Ninth Street,  was converted into a handful of spaces in a parking lot last year. I realize that the target audience for this sort of post  is pretty limited – can probably be counted on one hand (my brothers and sisters) – but some stories just need to be told.

I think our Front Porch was the most underrated and versatile room in the house. The space had wonderful natural light, surrounded on three sides by rows of curtained windows, which provided a nice balance between openness and privacy. On the side that opened up to the Shannon's at 1523 Ninth Street, there were two sets of tall screened windows that could be unlocked and swung open, exposing the porch to pleasant breezes in the Spring and Summer months or to the sounds of gentle rain showers or violent thunderstorms. The fourth wall featured a pair of French Doors that could open into the Living Room and the “interior” Front Door which led into the Hallway and the base of the Upstairs Steps.

Though it was completely enclosed from the elements, it wasn’t what they today refer to as heated square footage. While this somewhat diminished its utility between the end of October and the middle of March, the Front Porch really took center stage from Spring through Indian Summer.

Reap What One Sows?

Loyal readers of this weblog will no doubt recall the childhood episode detailed in Haggling at Schulman’s. Executive Summary: I pitched a fit with my mom in order to avoid the street-cred-degradation that would have resulted from wearing a pair of “irregular” Pro Keds for Seventh Grade hoops at McNelis Catholic. Not my proudest moment growing up, but sometimes, frankly, the ends do justify the means.

Roughly 30 years after this incident, I am hustling into the gym at Stanford Middle School in the fall of 2002, having left work in RTP a little later than I had planned. It’s the first game for the Seventh Grade Boy’s Basketball team that season. The Chargers are running their layup line and, while walking up the steps to my seat,  I peripherally notice that one of our players doesn’t have the same model of sneakers as all the others.  As the focus sharpens, I am hit with the sinking realization that youngest son Chris is indeed the outlier. Expletives deleted.

Mount Mitchell

I recently completed a trip that took me to Asheville, NC and then Charleston, SC. The primary purpose was to watch some South Atlantic League minor league baseball games (“Low A” ball), but I also managed to squeeze in some other sight-seeing. One could probably spend several days to do Charleston right and I was only there for a brief period (and dodged rain for most of that time), but I was really impressed with Mt. Pleasant and hope to go back there for a more leisurely and in-depth visit to “Chucktown”. While in Asheville, I spent a really enjoyable day consuming a portion of the Pigsah Region of the Blue Ridge Parkway – a section that was virgin to me.

That Worked Out So Well

It was a sunny Sunday morning in the third week of February, 2013.  Inside my modest 2200 square foot property, it was 53° Fahrenheit on the first floor. I’d like to tell you that the root cause of this condition was simply the case of my 14 year old propane forced-air furnace finally giving up its ghost, but I am afraid that it was more of a self-inflicted wound type of deal – I basically ran out of propane. Since it didn’t get above 38° outside that weekend in my little neck of the woods, it was a pretty chilly time for Your Faithful Servant. The story behind this latest instance of “aging gracefully” highlights the timeless correctness of the KISS Principle with equal parts of “If It Isn’t Broke, Don’t Fix It” and “Don’t be Such a Dumbass” thrown in.

The Birds

Big-time thunderstorms and winds moved through the NC Piedmont last Thursday evening. This was part of that wide band of nasty that ran through the entire mid-Atlantic that day. The next morning, my lot and driveway were just a wall-to-wall carpet of branches and leaves. There is nothing abnormal about that in the summer around here, though I did lose another oak to the big winds. This one landed safely in the middle of the woods, far away from propane tank and house.

Friday morning, as I waddled down the steps to start some clothes in the dryer before getting ready for work, I noticed that there was some additional carnage with which to deal.

Passing of the Torch

For the better part of the last 13 years or so, even to this day, I have spun the same parental rap when one of my kids is about to drive somewhere. The rap goes something like:

• Is your cell phone charged?
• Take it easy and keep an eye on your speed.
• Make sure you wear your seat belt.
• Text me when you get there (or get back).

Since they are all adults now, I understand that this behavior of mine is probably awkward for them. However, it gives me some sense of peace of mind – and at the end of the day, it really is all about me, right? So they all shine it on for me.

Beast of Burrden

Across the alley from (and a bit cattycorner to) our lot at 1521 Ninth Street in the Fairview Neighborhood sat this massive wild rhubarb bush. It was directly across from the abandoned tiny garage at the bottom of the Brooks lot. This growth was quite impressive – both in physical scale and in the quantity of burrs it produced.

A bur (also spelled burr) is a seed or dry fruit or infructescence in which the seeds bear hooks or teeth which attach themselves to the fur of passing animals or the clothing of people. The hooks or teeth can be irritants and very hard to remove from clothing, such as wool or cotton. The bur of burdock was the inspiration for Velcro. – Wikipedia

Pirate ARCO Pictures From 1971

         

On Sunday home games this year at PNC Park, my favorite MLB team is sporting the uniforms they wore in the early 70’s when they broke in Three Rivers Stadium. The look is a classic one – I almost dare say it is “timeless”. Modern, yet understated. Who the hell knew polyester could ooze such class?

The Bucs wore these uniforms until the Lumber and Lightning year of 1977, when new manager Chuck Tanner, in conjunction with the speed game he brought along with him from Oakland, introduced the infamous “Nine Permutations”. These were the various mix-and-match combinations that were created from jerseys and pants, each available in three different looks: white pinstripe, gold, and black. Some of those worked nicely together – I was partial to black with white pinstripes. Others didn’t mesh so well – the all gold look was particularly gaudy.

The Original or the Remake?

Recently, I was in Northern VA to visit with my Big Bros and Sister-in-Law Lora and attend the Washington National’s home opener. (OK, recently is kind of relative – I started this post and then sat on it for about a month.) It was a really good time. On Sunday evening, there was this glorious stretch of about four hours, spent just shooting the shit and reminiscing with Rich, Steve, and Lora about Joan and Cody N™. We were at Rich's basement bar, surrounding the two-tower keg system, which was efficiently dispensing copious amounts of Sam Adams Boston Lager and Miller Lite. Those were just about the best four hours Your Faithful Servant has had over the last six months. Really need to figure out a way to do that more often. Nourishment for the soul, indeed.

Curb Your Napkin Usage

Not a unique observation, but I have always felt that the appeal of shows like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm (starring Seinfeld co-creator Larry David) is due, in large part, to their universal nature. So many of the plots revolving around ordinary everyday occurrences and our reaction to them. It is uncanny how many personal incidents in one’s own real life can be mapped back to some moment or scene in some episode of Seinfeld or Curb.

No Soup for You!

Recently I have been finding myself becoming increasingly excited about developing software. I was noodling on the root cause of this a bit and I am not sure that I can identify that. But it makes me quite happy nonetheless, so I am not going to miss out on the forest for the trees.

I usually have one or two outside-of-work software-related projects that keep me busy. Most of these are small one-offs that are worked on for “technical vitality” – you know, acquiring enough practical development experience in a technology so that you can at least put it on the resume and answer the resulting interview questions about a technology without looking like a fool.

Feets Don’t Fail Me Now

(There is a potentially disturbing image in this post. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.)

Yet Another Sign of the Apocalypse? As detailed in this piece at Fox News, apparently the fashion rage nowadays is for women to undergo surgical alteration of their feet so they may, get this, better fit into high heels. These “alterations” include shortening of toes, collagen injections to provide better sole cushioning,  and even complete removal of pinky toes. For that last enhancement, I guess you could say that this little piggy went to market….and never came back.

(As an aside, what is the probability that Your Faithful Servant could compose a blog post about “feet” and not have that post at least partially rooted around Rex Ryan’s wife? Sorry – I consider myself a pretty open-minded dude - but that is just some weird stuff. To each his own, I guess.)

Bad Beats

In Confessions of a Winning Poker Player, Jack King said, "Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career." Seems true to me. 'Cause walking in here, I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking of how I lost it.

Mike McDermott in Rounders

Mike (played by Matt Damon) was referring to poker beats, but I think the concept is also applicable to crushing defeats suffered by sports team for which you emotionally pull. I am not talking about “garden variety” losses in big games, but rather those last-minute snatches of defeat from the jaws of victory that just sting so deeply.

Benefit of the Doubt

My Shoulder Angel and Shoulder Demon regularly do battle, the intensity of which usually depends on that day’s emotional chemistry or star alignment. My Shoulder Demon, BadChep, is churlish, emotionally immature, and prone to the psychological condition technically known as The Red Ass. Online,  BadChep is manifested in the form of some fairly nasty snark. Conversely, my Shoulder Angel, GoodChep, is laid back,  pretty chill, and passive. The dirty water in this world that rolls right off the back of GoodChep can choke BadChep.

It was halftime of the Belk Bowl in Charlotte on December 27. I was freezing my buns off, so we decided to walk around the concourse of the lower-level of Bank of America Stadium. When we reach the Cincinnati Bearcats side of the bowl, one of their fans, a guy clearly older than me, approaches:

“Hey, we had a question for you Duke fans. A bunch of us were wondering who maybe the best player in the history of your program was. We weren’t able to really come up with anyone.”

Sigh. There was a lot of sub-context at play here.

Been Nice Working With You

LinkedIn sent me an automated email recently detailing that 7% of my 215 “connections” had changed jobs in 2012. (As an aside, consider those 215 LinkedIn connections compared to 65 or so Facebook Friends. As if more evidence was needed to illustrate that Your Faithful Servant has been challenged forever with that whole Work/Life Balance thing.)

The 7% figure was frankly a bit surprising when I chewed on it a bit – I would have thought that percentage to be quite a bit higher. 2012 was quite a year of personnel churn at work with a number of colleagues from both my current and previous projects moving on to different jobs. Some moved to other work within the company. Many moved to entirely new companies. Common external destinations in RTP for folks leaving the company seemed to be SAS and NetApp. A healthy job market for software engineering is A Good Thing (selfishly speaking of course), even if the folks departing left some big shoes to fill.

Marshall Amps It Up

You might have already come across the above video, as it has gone viral over the last couple of days. It captures Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson taunting the Auburn student section moments after hitting the game-winning free throws in last Saturday’s SEC tilt. The accompanying description of this scene from CBSSports.com College Basketball blogger Jeff Borzello here is just so sweet – well done Jeff - simply superb LOL stuff.

I have to admit that Sunday afternoon, when I came across this clip, I was already through 5 bottles of a 6-pack of Sam Adams Winter Lager. I proceeded to spend the better part of the next 15 minutes watching the clip and howling.

Rivalry Week

The Monday before Thanksgiving, a few of us at work took our co-op James out for a lunch before he returned back to Michigan where he attends the University of Michigan studying Computer Science. James was part of my Scrum Team since June or so – really bright, with a good attitude and easy to work with. 

James was planning to leave after work on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and drive straight through from The Triangle to his home In Grand Rapids – with his entire collection of personal possessions from his apartment stuffed into his mid-size sedan. Grand Rapids is about 800 miles from RTP – in Thanksgiving traffic. Ahhh, the boldness, energy, and optimism of youth!

Match Game

In December, The Mother ship sent out an email to all US employees highlighting a change to the manner in which the employer match on 401(k) tax-deferred contributions would be handled. Previously, the company match was disbursed each pay period (twice a month) with the effect that the interest on the matching funds was thereby accrued by the employee.

With this new change, the company match will be made in a single lump sum disbursement on December 31 (with the company accruing the interest). The IBM match is up to 6% – which is nice – free money. I am thankful that we have the match, but I am not lying when I say I would prefer to have the interest on the match (accrued during the year) deposited in my account. Oh well. As a former manager told me once, “Joe, it’s an imperfect world”.