It blew up on me

The truck that is.

I try to only have one rig down at a time, but I fail at that sometimes. The bike blew up spectacularly a while ago and that was the Winter project but then yesterday the truck decided to join the broken club.

I was driving home from filming the promo for this Sunday's Mythbusters on Holy Book. I had made it to Lavell Edward's Stadium when the truck just shut down. The motor just stopped running. I started it again and it ran for about 5 seconds when it shut down again. I was able to limp into a service station and called AAA for a tow.

Got it towed home (yes, I am going to play mechanic and see if I can repair it) and parked it for some time. Now the problem is I was rushing home to get some work done before heading out for connection group. I didn't make it. Since it was my second day in the new job, the work won out and my wife went to connection group without me while I stayed at home to get some work done. Probably a bad decision but it's part of me to hype around in the new job.

So this weekend we'll have to count flashing lights on the dashboard to get the codes out the computer has thrown then I'll contact SSDiesel to help me figure out what to do to fix the thing.

Anniversary

Not of my marriage, but rather today is my 15 year anniversary as a nerd at Novell. I started as an IS&T building technician way back then, became a data center manager, then to front line support, then back line support followed by world wide support. I then moved to development in 1997 as a software engineer then a senior software engineer for years. Today, 15 years after I started at Novell, I'm back in IS&T but as a systems architect this time.

It has certainly been an interesting ride. Novell has treated me well and I've made some tremendous friends in these 15 years.

Wow!

I was online at my bank just checking the last few transactions to make sure everything went through properly and I had a wow moment. My saving account had $2,000 more in it than it should have! So I checked it out and somebody last Friday had a fairly huge check they cashed and took a ton of it back out in a cashiers check, then deposited the $2,000 into the wrong account.

A phone call to the credit union agreed there was a problem and we found it occurred at the Centerville branch, so on the phone to the Branch Manager and they will be manually going through receipts for last Friday to figure it all out.

I just feel bad for the poor person who thought they deposited $2,000 into their account and if they check it right now...it's missing.

Greed or faith?

So it was 21 August 2007 when my back was miracled better. That was when the nerve pain was shut off and an estimated 70% of the pain I was going through went away. I'm completely off the heavy duty pain meds at this time and I'm just taking some pills as needed for the pain.

That's the deal, though. I'm still in pain.

So am I being greedy by continuing to pray for healing? I'm very thankful for the enormous pain reduction and the nerve being completely healed, but I'm still asking that the remainder of my back is healed so that I can stop taking any pain pills at all. And it occurred to me that maybe I'm being greedy. Maybe this is where I'm at for the remainder of my days. And if that is true, I can handle it and be thankful for it. The nerve being shut off makes it possible to make it through anything else, but now with a glimpse of how it could be, I want to be able to just have normal aches and pains again and not my back blaring through it all.

Coming together

Here at RCC we have small groups we refer to as connection groups. These are a group of folk coming together to talk about the message, the homework we've done and how it can all apply to our real, every-day lives. Any time you get new people coming to the group there is a period where things are a bit more tense and formal and people have their guard up. After a while, just the time spent in the group, eating dessert after the group, having coffee and doing life together really melds the group. Last night, it was obvious my connection group is really coming together. We cried and ribbed each other and got real with some stuff that is going on in our lives. You can't force this stuff, it just happens over time if you are doing things right and the leaders are willing to be open and honest in their communication. This is what being the church is all about.

The Aftermath

Well, there it is, the problem. It appears I had a defective cast piston. It made it 7100 miles but decided to separate from the rest of itself at speed on the freeway. I was able to tear into it last night and it certainly is a simple machine, but with this kind of failure, we are now looking at a new piston and a new barrel. In addition, we have to wonder what is is affected. The valves were kissed by the top of the piston, so we may need some machine work on the head. My biggest concern by far though is the lower end. If any of the metal chunks got into the bottom end we will need to rebuild that with new bearings and that will become costly. At least we'll be doing the work in the our own shop rather than paying to have it done. A good Winter project and a reason to relish the coming of Spring!

Black flagged

Well, today started out nicely. It was in the mid-40s and the motorcycle is functioning again, so I figured I'd have a last blast before Winter truly stopped me from riding the bike. The boy begged me to take him to school on the bike and I was running late anyway, so I tossed him on the back and off we went!

The bike was running nicely. Smooth and without any problems. Dropped him off at school and took off through Spanish Fork to hit the freeway. On the freeway, I quickly accelerated to 70 and moved to the slow lane. It seems 70 is slow for the morning commute, but I'm not comfortable going too much faster than that. So here I am cruising at 70 in the slow lane wishing I had heavier duty gauntlets to keep my fingers warm when BANG there was a sudden clatter from below me and I ceased to have any power. I immediately grabbed the clutch and began slowing in the breakdown lane.

Well, that lane is well and truly named. I was broken down! After a perfunctory examination found no interior parts on the exterior, I moved the kickstart lever to see if I can fire the beast back up. Uh-oh, that moved way too easily. And with a clatter. We have had a dramatic disconnect of various internal engine parts that have resulted in my vehicle no longer functioning...this Winter will be the rebuild, it appears.

Changing lives

Today, Novell has elected to layoff some employees. I don't know what all the numbers are yet, I just know that a lot of my friends were notified today that they will no longer be employed here.

On the good side, Novell is very generous with the severance package. Just by working here for a year you get 9 weeks of severance. Then an additional week per year of service. They don't have to do that, but they do it to help everybody out and not burn any bridges in case they decide to hire anybody back.

I had heard last week that I was probably going to be laid off as well, but another department in Novell called me about 10 hours after I heard and gave me a phone interview. The next day was a couple hours spent interviewing with the manager and then the team and by the day after that I received an offer. So I'll be moving departments at Novell but staying working here.

Goodbye, sir

Jim Rigney who wrote books as Robert Jordan passed away on 16 September 2007. He was most well known for the Wheel of Time series that has spanned eleven books so far and all us fans are awaiting book twelve to wrap it all up!

If you want to read about the funeral and the thoughts shared there, DragonMount has a lot of information there. I am sad to see him go because I have enjoyed his stories over the years. He was able to bring an incredibly complex world to life for me and his ability to tell a story was unsurpassed.

Promos

Yesterday afternoon we had our production meeting out at my place because we needed to shoot intros for some of the new Mythbusters series. There are times when I really don't understand the creative team. They have a plan, I suppose. And we followed it! Hopefully the intros turn out nice, but I'm telling you, some of the creative team are plain weird!

Cider

I have a buddy with a small farm in Spanish Fork that has an orchard of apples. He usually makes a deal with another farmer that the other guy does all the work trimming and spraying the apples and they share in the harvest. That didn't happen this year.

This year there were worms in the apples so he opened the orchard for free. My family went through the orchard picking apples for cidermaking. We stopped somewhere North of 1000 pounds of apples! Thank goodness we took a break that day!

The next day found us in the garage with an assembly line of sorts. My oldest, my buddy's oldest, my buddy and my wife all were cutting the worms and eaten parts out of the apples. My other two and my buddy's girl were tasked with moving the apples from the truck to the rinse water then from there to the cutting stations. My job was to put all the cut apples through the chewer and then press for cider. We worked for hours and ended up with a decent amount of cider...and it tasted wonderful!

Layoffs

As most of you know, I have a job outside of being a pastor at church. I have worked at Novell for almost 15 years now and almost every year we have had a series of layoffs. When I first started, we had a layoff about 30 days after I began and I was very worried. I worked for almost a year with people I knew to get a job here and I was so worried the new guy would be the first on the chopping block.
I was wrong.
Novell did a great job of a yearly layoff that really weeded out the chaff. Sure, there were some good people that were laid off, but generally they were usually the ones that we could afford to go ahead and lay off.
That ended a few years ago. In my opinion, they were making decisions that caused some of our products would be removed rather than laying off others. Since then, layoffs have been a lot more tense. Just being good at what you do is no longer enough to ensure you continue to have a job.
So now we are in the midst of another layoff. The executive management generally does not tell us grunts much about what is going on, and they usually tell their VPs who tell the directors who tell the managers that they are not to tell us much. And the managers do not tell us much. But it appears there will be quite a few people being laid off this round.
It's tough. It doesn't matter if you are laid off or not you are affected by this. Your friends will either be out looking for a job and worrying about how to feed their families and you empathize and work with them to help find a job. Or it's you out looking for a job. It's emotionally rough.

Sushi...ugh

Let me preface this by saying I am not a sushi eater. I never have been interested in raw fish. I do like seaweed because of the salty flavor, but sushi has never interested me.

One of my friends here at work is into sushi. He told me of a new sushi place in Provo and assured me I have to go for lunch with him and try it out. So off I went. Surprisingly, I found that I really enjoyed the experience!

The Godzilla was really tasty as was the spicy tuna. The hand roll and California rolls were okay. The next step was the nagiri. This is not the rolled up in seaweed stuff, but rather a hunk of fish on top of a wad of sticky rice with a splash of something on it for flavor. The salmon was pretty good. The tuna was all right, but not the best. The yellowtail was really good!

I went into the lunch with an open mind and found that I could enjoy some of the various offerings. The flavors were different than what I normally enjoy, but I did enjoy it.

Until the next day.

I was sick over that lunch for the entire next day! UGH! My body does not like sushi and I paid a dear price for it all. I guess I learned to just keep with what I know!