#365Gratitude Day 248:Nostalgia in the Bathroom

So Kevin and Kacie have this book in their guest bathroom, Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader. 

I know this book. Like, this actual copy. It used to sit in Kacie's bathroom at our house in Alexandria, when she, Missy, and I lived together. I have read every page of it. Frequently while being implored by Kacie or Missy to hurry up in there!

Kacie and I dated for years.  We broke up amicably a while ago. She's since gotten married, moved far away (twice!), and had a kid.  

I've since moved twice, changed jobs twice, and many other life changes too.  

But we will always care about one another. We have history .  That is really a big deal for me.

I do want Missy and Kacie both to know that I didn't write this blog post while in the bathroom either.  

#365Gratitude Day 247:Aunt Missy

My wife Missy loves children. We don't have any of our own, but we're aunt and uncle to several kids both through our family and our family-of-choice. 

We're down visiting with our friends Kevin and Kacie and their little boy. He's completely adorable, and we haven't seen him since he was just a few weeks old. 

Missy loves him, and it's mutual. Watching them interact makes my heart get all melty.  She has so much love to give.  

#365Gratitude Day 246:On the road again

Missy and I drove down last night from our house in Virginia to visit our friends Kevin and Kacie in South Carolina.  There was a huge storm coming through the area as we drove, Hermine.

We were prepared.  We had good rain jackets in the car, plenty of snacks, a full tank of gas, and most importantly, a shared sense of adventure and patience.  We knew we wanted to get there, but it didn't matter how long it would take.

Missy started us off, letting me rest for the first leg of our trip.  At a certain point, the rain was very heavy, the traffic slow, and visibility poor, so we got off the highway, and pulled off on a dark country road to switch places.

As we drove, we listened to a great audiobook, John Scalzi's Old Man's War.  We talked about all sorts of things, everything and nothing, in that way that only people who love one another very much can do.

We stopped for french fries.

We talked about our dreams.

It was long, tiring, and entirely great.

Missy and I have been together for almost twelve years, married for almost nine of them.  There's a Lao-tzu saying I love, "a good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent upon arriving."

I'm loving the trip so far.

#365Gratitude Day 245:Couched in some uncertain terms

This is a video of porn casting couch auditions.  No, actually, it's not.
What it is, is one of the funniest things I've seen in a very long time.

I stumbled across it on reddit this morning, and laughed myself silly.  See for yourself.

#365Gratitude Day 244:Undeniable

I've been a programmer for a long time.  I had a long career working as a Lotus Notes developer (over a decade!) during which I got really damn good at it.  I made Notes do things it's just not supposed to do.  During that time, when I'd run into some new bug or programming challenge, I'd often quip to my boss/client/aardvark/whatever, "No software problem denies me for too long."

Many years ago I first got exposed to working in Java, and got excited by it, but didn't really get the chance to dig in and do stuff with it.  Then about four years ago, I made the transition to really work in it, as well as serious web development using Groovy/Grails, javascript, jQuery, and a host of other technologies.

I was excited, but often hesitant, unsure of how to do some things.  There's a really big difference between working in a walled garden like Notes, and something as wide open as enterprise web development.  It's a vast ocean of technology and technique.  

But lately I'm feeling that same sense of being undeniable again.  I had this challenging user interface task at my day job recently, to create a UI that showed in the front, progress of a job running in a task on the server, in the back.  I knew what I was after, but not exactly how to get there.

I dug in.

First I recalled some javascript commands I knew loosely (specifically setInterval and clearInterval) and looked them up online, to know them better.  Then I tinkered, creating AJAX calls, checking the js console, hitting some stumbling blocks, and working my way past them.  I consulted with Spacey, bouncing ideas off him, asking his expertise too.  Part of being a good developer is leveraging your resources, and that includes seeking advice.

Late yesterday, I got it.  I've still got some testing to do today, with a bigger set of data, but it's looking good.  At a certain point I sat at my desk, running my test code over and over, and feeling really damn good about myself.

For the first time in a while, I said it out loud, again.

"No software problem denies me for too long."

I knew it was true.