The many faces of Christmas













Eric and i headed down to Owego on Saturday morning to continue the festivities with the Myers clan. Kristin hosted everyone for dinner and the stomach bug alert level kicked down to yellow thankfully after anna started feeling better.









The afternoon consisted of exhausted sport - inclined nephews, the first try of an experimental Hor' duerve "Grandma's Garlic Yum Yum" and much sugar-enhanced goofyness. Presents were unwrapped, beverages consumed and mash potatoes thoroughly ketchupped. Nephews cracked smiles and there was much rejoicing.























To finish the evening, the ladies did their best Isadora Duncan imitation.

Merry Christmas!

Eric and I both were awake pretty early. So much for a holiday and sleeping in. We entertained each other fairly well with our stocking contents.














The circus peanuts were not universally received.

Its got to be the morning after...








Well, the annual holiday party was a bash. Despite the last minute stress bombs.

Eric and I were up early to start getting the house ready and we were moving at a fairly good clip until 9:30 am when eric turned on the vacuum cleaner. Half the house promptly lost electricity
and the breaker was not the problem.....

!!

SO - a phone call later and the landlord and his electrician were ovder around 11 and were here for 4.5 hours trying the find the problem. Eric and I told the landlord this was the same circuit we have been having problems with and since half the circuit was still on... there was a bad junction box somewhere. Hopefully not burning in a wall....
Meanwhile - they have tools all over the kitchen and I am tapping my foot to start cooking for the party........ My sister Kristin and her friend Chris arrive to help out and they finally clean up around 3:30 or 4:00 YIKES.
So at 3:30(?) the landlord locates the problem...... turns out it is a... junction box..... in the back stairwell.....

Annnnd off we go.....


The party was great. Especially with electricity. The extra help really was awesome. I got to spend actual minutes with all our guests. Our resident photographer was on hand to document the party. But here is the morning after...

Happy Holidays part 2




This years holiday card.


St. Eric - patron saint of abandoned disco balls

St. Tom - patron saint of old grumpy volkswagens

Happy Holidays!









This month has been a blur. Work strangely became nutty busy [ with a sprinkle of unreality thrown in ] and rather than just focus on getting ready for our party, I have been making messes around the house rather than cleaning them up. We have managed EVEN MORE Leds for the holidays - more pics later.. All fun.

Success!

Now to find a suitable project box!

Flux capacitor!






The holidays are coming and there is a zillion things to do - but instead I have made a mess of the dining room table with this. IT is a home electronics kit for a color organ. THose old 70's disco-y things that made light to the music? Eric and I have several off E bay and I bought this kit last year. So i finally dragged this back out to try and put together. Not finished yet - but it is fun to try and decipher the assembly diagram and put it together. Hopefully I will not burn down the house. Some examples on YouTube:





Hopefully Eric and I will make it up to this

Pimpin' the Scion









Eric was looking for a new stereo for his car. His requirements did not intially seem that complex. - USB on front. iPod Support and color changing. The color changing part really put a spin on the search. Ended up finding a Pioneer AVH p3100 DVD. It looked really neat and also boasted a touch screen, video playback capability and lots of options to install later. The worst part of the install was realizing that I had been sent the wrong wiring harness [ only after I did an *Artisan* soldering job ] but the second time to anything always goes quickly.
































































Annnd the finished product - featuring our favorite - the Venture Brothers

My sister dressed me as a butterfly



How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son



Strangely enough -I started hiding behind costumes by my own accord. Did the light up robot and then a ghost several years....

The Nightmare comes to Life - an extended entry

I share a recurring nightmare with my siblings [ and others? ] It follows basically the same script everytime. I am in school. It is the end of the semester/quarter. I have not attended the important class. I do not have the book. I have not studied. I have not finished the paper. I will fail the final test. My entire life will be ruined.

Sometime the school changes - UB, RIT somewhere else. It is always a Math or English class.

I always wake up in terror and typically take 30 seconds to remind myself - School is over. You are done. You have a job now.


I believe The Dream remained with me for years after RIT due to my laggardly thesis progress.
Anyone nearby me from 1995 - 2006 knew how OnAgain Off Again I was with the thesis. My need for completion was even mentioned in my mother's Eulogy. It was like pulling teeth as I wrote it. It was so completely LeftBrained. My RightBrain screeched everytime I worked on it.

[ I believe it was a very good thesis however..]

But I took too long to complete it. RIT had some vague guideline about 7 years for completion and I ran through that in a blink of an eye. The last 4-5 years of work on it were painful. Mentally and financially. I was registering every quarter for a graduate credit ( $780!) and I figured that little fee in itself was created to act as a spur in my quarters. My thesis advisor and department chairman were very helpful and were still speaking to me. So I figured that my deadline flaunting was on the up and up. [ Though I still had much anxiety over it. ] $80000 for a graduate education and no paper to show for it - sorta rings like "You're a loser"

Hence the recurring nightmare...

I wanted to quit my job at Xerox at many points. However - I told myself I could not quit until thesis was done. Hence I ground my teeth at work at many points and watched friends hop between new jobs, seemly up a rung every time. So as the fall of 2006 wore on and the wiff of layoff was in the air, I raced to get my final chapters finished and reviewed.

And very proudly handed in my final copy on Monday December 12th at 5:30pm

And on Tuesday December 13th at 8:30am - I was layed off. Bastards!


Final signatures were given in 2007 and I was told I was "all set" as I walked off into the sunset.
Done. Done. Done.

Fast forward to last month. I have been contract at WelchAllyn for a year now and the company was starting the process of making me a full time employee. WelchAllyn is a smaller company and I have been told directly that it is rare for them create new positions and new job descriptions. The fact that within 1 year, I, along with my fellow Ux contractors has managed to
introduce the company to the value of User Experience and now the company was creating new positions for the field - this was considered extrodinary

The Human resources person calls me in on a Monday [?] last month to let me know -

there's a problem.....

Don't you love that? That little phrase can strike terror in anyone. SO - I am told that my graduate school has reported that I am not on record as graduating.

And the Nightmare comes to life as a 80ft mental Tsunami sitting in a chair in the HR office.

Four phone calls later - and it is revealed that I never obtained a formal extension of thesis

Eh...what? So in 2007 a note was placed in my file and sent to my department chair regarding the missing extension and.......there it sat. Meanwhile my thesis was bound and sat happily in the library. And did I mention that the department chair in question had now left RIT and was in Utah not returning my email....

NO degree and a job offer hanging in the balance... talk about a need to vomit.

Four weeks worth of stress spinning in my head of someone new at RIT looking at my extended timeframe and Freaking out and what to do if they won't give me my degree....

The staff at RIT has been very helpful and I have been informed that the dean of graduate studies has signed off my extension and that my application for graduation has been approved and is being sent to the Registrar this week. Of course - I will never believe it until that stupid piece of paper is on my wall.. With a spot light on it.

Maybe this is last of that nightmare?

Chillin' in NYC

































Headed to NYC this weekend. Eric landed tickets for the big KISS concert at Madison Square garden. So we spend some time poking around the city with our friend Eli. Eric loved the concert and has several interesting videos from the concert. The band and the music were not my style - but it was still fun going to the concert and the city for the weekend. We headed out early sunday and managed to catch my cousin finishing the Steamtown marthon in Scranton PA. We met up with my sisters and then headed over to see our Aunt Catherine. Definitely a triple word score weekend.

Lackawanna Railroad station






















Of course! More poking around old railroad stations. Our friend Eli took us down the Christopher street piers in NYC on Saturday. While there - I spotted across the river the words L A C K A W A N N A. Recalling conversations with dad about his memories of the train from Scranton to NYC - I was intrigued. So ELi mentioned it was a PATH station now - so we hopped the train and took it one stop across the river and TA DA. Eric and Eli indulged me with poking around the old station. Some of it restored, some of it - not. Always makes me sad.













More information about the terminal:

Wikipedia

American Rails