Greater love hath no mother...

But to be outside in the frozen weather chipping away at the ice that has formed on the driveway trying to make a path for her children who are about to receive items for Christmas that require a bit of driveway to test out!

Reminders...

Some days you get reminders of your job as a father. This was one of those days.

You see, now that it is cold out, I gear up prior to heading to the garage to light the fire and get rolling. That is, I put on my duster and pull on my gloves. My gloves are fingerless wool because even though I get cold, I cannot stand my fingertips covered so I can't operate the controls. The Jeep is not like new vehicles where you just press a button and things work. I have to twist dials, pull cables, turn knobs and flip switches all during the morning commute. And having my fingers covered annoys me when I try to perform those tasks. Yes, this information is germane.

The other day, my oldest son had the opportunity to pick up some stuff to keep himself warm in the cold. Guess what he chose for his hands? Yep, fingerless gloves.

It's just another reminder to me that I'm being watched. I need to be the kind of man that is an example for my children. I need to be the kind of man I would like to grow into. And faking it or pretending to be something just doesn't work. These people live with me. They know me. They've seen me for who I really am not who I wish I was. It's a sobering reminder that I have a job to do as a father to these kids.

Fingerless gloves remind me to be the man I hope my boys grow in to and my daughter marries.

Oh, man, was it cold this morning! And this was around 0745. Today I am very grateful that I can send my boy out to feed the critters and I can stay inside!

Legacy

Saturday found me at home with the kids and wife gone to visit family and me in the shop getting caught up on some work. I had biodiesel I was working on for a little bit and the biodiesel heater took some tweaking. Then I was over in the metalworking side of the shop working on a project for a friend of mine. As I was measuring and cutting and threading and whatnot I got to thinking about why I enjoy this time in the shop. I came to the conclusion that the entire reason I had a shop out there at all was really because of my grandfather.
Gerald Lafayette Welsh or Gra as we all called him was brought up in a steelworking town in Pennsylvania. From the earliest stories I heard from him, he worked at "the mill." That was the center of the world in that small town. He married my grandmother, Gommie, and they both headed for work in California during World War II. After arriving there, the job he was promised didn't materialize, but he quickly found work and they raised their family. My earliest memories of Gra were always about him coming over to visit and fixing things.
That was always what was said in my house, "wait 'til Gra comes by, he'll fix it." And he did. Anything that was broken, Gra would come by for a few days and it'd be fixed. That completely fascinated me, how he could innately understand how something was put together so he could understand how to fix that thing. As a kid, I worked diligently on the whole how it was put together portion...the putting it back together part was harder for me. Fast forward to today and I have a metal lathe and milling machine along with a host of welding and fabrication equipment in the shop. Heck, the entire reason I wanted a shop can be traced back to Gra's influence on me when I was younger.
Which gets me to wondering what kind of legacy I am leaving for my children. Are they learning the value of education and hard work from me? Do they understand the principle of treating all people fairly? I certainly hope so.
As we get ready for Christmas this year, we were sitting having dinner and I told everybody in the family about the fact that some kids this year are struggling to have presents for Christmas. Here at Novell they partner with a local group that helps make lists of families with children that are just unable to provide some Christmas presents for them. I asked everybody if they wanted to help out a family by getting them gifts. That was a resounding yes, but I really wanted to make it personal for the kids, so I told them in order for us to help this family out they would each have to give up one of the gifts they receive for Christmas to give to the kids who won't have Christmas. That caused them to stop and think for a bit. I was very proud of them when they all three agreed to give something up to help those less fortunate.
I hope my legacy is a good one.

Missionary focus

Today's missionary focus was on the Teague family in Niger. They keep a website updated with what is happening with them in Niger and I promised to put a link up. Just click here and you will be able to find out what they are doing in Niger.
I'm also looking for the video we made about when Brent was shot in Niger.

Gingerbread houses with Grammy and Gramps

Then torture by having their photos taken in front of the tree when they get home

Icky, overcast morning in Benjamin

What is really at the end of the rainbow...

A friend just sent this to me about the kind of pot really found at the end of the rainbow...

Nerding around with lead

I use mechanical pencils. I've used them since I was in school. I have found that I just don't like the sloppy nature inherent in a traditional wood pencil. When you finally have a nice, sharp point on your wood pencil, you use it, it works well and then by the end of a few lines of notes...it's dull. You can no longer go a superscript items into your notes because it's too dull to use that way. Mechanical pencils allow you to always have a sharp point and have consistent character size throughout a page of notes. Yes to you who think I am completely insane! Consistent character size is important in my structured nerd world!

This comes up because I was looking for a new mechanical pencil today and the options have changed. When I was in high school, there were three pencils you could purchase. The 0.3mm version was a tiny little lead that broke easily but gave a fantastically crisp line. I didn't use many of those because I tended to break them. The 0.5mm version was my favorite as it was a nice compromise between the larger 0.7mm version which was just too thick for me and the 0.3mm cat whisker version that I broke all the time.

That seems to have ended these days.

At the office supply store, I found 0.5mm, 0.7mm and a hugely icky 0.9mm version! I mean you might as well try to write with a felt-tip marker as use a 0.9mm pencil lead! It's humongous! I was happy that my favorite 0.5mm was still available, but what's with the huge lead being so popular any more? Are people just so used to writing with styli that they need the gunga lead?

Doc

Documentation, documentating, writing it down.

I hate it.

I loathe it.

Are you getting the idea? I do not like writing documentation for stuff. And guess what I'm doing at work....

Yeah, documenting. Gugh.

I have to write a user document on how to use Novell's in-house SSLVPN solution for a rollout internally to IS&T and then to the rest of the company. My goal was to keep it to one page, my boss's goal is for it to answer every question a user may ask. Those goals are mutually exclusive.

In the end, I wrote two pages of stuff with a lot of pictures in it and we'll see if he approves. He wrote the longer doc for the help desk to use and a FAQ anybody can refer to. Mine talks about sipping hot cocoa and waiting, his talks about making sure OpenSSL v0.9.7 or above is installed. I find my doc easier to read! :-)