Walls come tumbling down

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January 2002

January 2002

So, it snowed just in time for Christmas. The flu that I started with evolved into something extremely nasty and I never made it to New York. I finally managed to shirk it just before new year. The snow, astonishingly, melted last week while I was in New York. It's snowing again today.

After some mechanical difficulties, Natzoid's family arrived for Christmas. The kids played extensively, the adults played a lot of Euchre (there were many alcohol induced 'alone' calls and much talk of the merits of being two-suited). We all concurred that Natzoid's dad's epitaph should read "Here is Richard, he is two-suited". We did a trip to the Mall of America's Camp Snoopy where the kids spent the day riding the rides. Upon our return, the dogs had eaten a hole in the carpet (a perfect 12 inch square) and had destroyed the cushions from the couch that was kindly donated by a work-mate of mine. A few days earlier, they had eaten a hole in a mattress on a bed in that same room.

We spent a particularly amusing evening discussing my impersonation of Natzoid's dad. Most sentences begin "well the thing of it is" or "well you see". And all motoring directions involve driving somewhere via John Deere Road. You could be traveling from Wigan to Leigh in England, but you still need to take John Deere Road in Moline IL. "You could take route 5 but I'd take John Deere Road to the interstate if I were you". His greatest announcement continues to be "Natzoid (pronounced Nadaly), the world does not revolve around you". I practice, but I can't get the drawl.

Natzoid's brother called over Christmas. I believe he lives in Kentucky now...he moves around quite a lot.

The city I visited in NY last week is Binghamton. I first went there a few years ago and found it a little strange. In fact, I commented that it appears that something is going on that you don't know about and that it reminded me of the X Files. I could see the teletype at the start of an episode...BINGHAMTON, NY...and then a couple of weeks later, what happened? The start of the X File said exactly that. However, having been back since and done more than sat in a Holiday Inn, I actually quite like it. It has some beautiful geography and is within driving distance of Niagara Falls (although I didn't make it there). Binghamton is the town where IBM was founded, although I don't think they are there anymore.

I've bought a webcam for when I travel so I can see the kids and remotely control the dogs. Nothing is funnier than chastising the dogs over the 'net. Natzoid and I play online Euchre at Yahoo games when I'm away...with not being at home, at least we are doing something together. She has inherited her father's card-sharking ability and can retro-analyze what it is that I did right or wrong in a particular hand. "That 9 was as good as trump! Why did you lead the ace?". Well, erm...maybe I'm just daft?

Next Saturday, I leave for San Diego for a week to go to a trade-show. There was talk of Natzoid and the kids accompanying me as Zoe's second birthday falls during that week but the cut-backs at work continue, and so it fell through.

Because Natzoid's dad was here, we now know how to open the flue on the fireplace. This has meant we can burn those poxy pseudo-logs that you buy at petrol stations (they even come with a fake crackling sound). We have been adventurous and burned some real wood. In England, they pretty much stopped using real fires a long time ago and replaced them with nasty fake real fires powered by gas (which I used to like but once you get used to real fires, you go off the nasty fake ones). In the US, they don't really burn coal, just wood. Anyway, the use of the fire has increased our fuel bills immensely - wood and pseudo-logs are not cheap, and the basement is freezing so bye-bye hard-earmed.

Another thing that Natzoid's dad found was the water meter. I have no idea how the various household warming, cooling and softening devices work in American houses. In fact, I'm pretty bloody useless when it comes to anything related to manual dexterity. In my world, if it can't be fixed with a keyboard, it probably isn't worth fixing. Natzoid is the handyman of the house and the mechanic to the car. I can nod sagely and say "it's your flange reamer". I don't even know what a flange reamer is. I can, however, recognize defective thrust bearings on a car. Anyway I have fixed something today - I had messed up on the genealogy section of the web-site so fixed that, and I'd broken our yatescentral email by trying to filter out spam and some attachments, so performed some remedial work on that.

In an effort to become even more reclusive, we have adopted a policy of leaving the computer connected to the 'net so as to avoid unsolicted calls from telesales people and we have also started ordering our groceries online, thus avoiding having to do battle at Rainbow every weekend. Now, if I could only manage to work from home when I'm in Minneapolis, I could reduce outside interactions to an absolute minimum. Bliss :).

Last week, Cyberoptics laid off another 10% of its employees. This time it wasn't just the rank and file that were "let go" but senior VPs, VPs and GMs. Unfortunately, they were some of the more creative and talented individuals. I was secretly hoping that I would be among the casualties - exercising stock options, pay-off etc - but it wasn't to be. So in addition to the people I know have gone, I have the added pleasure (sic) of discovering who the remainder are when I arrive in what is sure to be a morgue tomorrow. We've talked ourselves into recession - the whole slowdown began when companies like Cisco, Nortel and JDS Uniphase suddenly realised that they had believed their own hype too much and started writing down tens of billions of dollars a quarter when they woke up to the fact that they had overpaid in acquisitions and they had too much inventory. You can't turn back the clock on what you paid for acquisitions but you can work off inventory; and that is what it will take to spur us back to life. That and when telecoms people have the blinding realisation that local optical fibre is a benefit in the US and that people will pay for that service.

On the subject of high speed connections, I have been trying to get a broadband connection for quite a few months. Unfortunately, we have too many "load coils" (whatever they are) on our phone line for DSL and AT&T have not yet rolled out cable modem access to Coon Rapids. So I am condemned to a life at 48Kbps for the moment. I know what Garrison Keillor means now...Lake Wobegon is Anoka, the next town over from Coon Rapids. What would a self-respecting Lutheran need high speed internet connection for?

Anyway, I still have a job, and I'm not bogged down by the flu. Can't be too bad. Although I do have a lot of things that I must get round to doing, like filing an adjustment of status. As Mr Keillor says, be well, do good work and keep in touch.