-=> Quoting Damon A. Getsman to Nancy Backus on 13-May-2015 11:04 <=-

 NB>> How old is he, again...?  At some point, he ought to be able to learn how
 NB>> to take disappointment in stride... but that does take some maturity. :)
 NB>> It does, though, help if one wasn't setting one's heart on it... ;)
 DAG> He's 8, going to be turning 9 on the first here. 

That's still pretty young... although, by that age, I was oldest of 5
kids, and learning that other things often had priority over what I
might have liked...  ;)

 DAG> I'm working with
 DAG> him on the disappointment bit, but I still try to make sure that I
 DAG> don't set him up for it by telling him about plans that have any sort
 DAG> of a decent chance of being pre-empted.  :)  He's really good about it,
 DAG> for the most part, but I like to save him the added disappointment
 DAG> being as we've been in a situation where he gets so few things above
 DAG> and beyond the average everyday norm for so long now. 

Makes sense... and if he's not set up to expect something, he won't miss
it if it doesn't happen after all... probably wouldn't hurt for him to
know, more in the abstract, that you are trying to figure out ways to do
some special things, though...

 DAG> Well, right now I think that the economic stability kind of takes
 DAG> the priority in most areas.  I'm going to try to make up for him
 DAG> missing that last little outing soon here.  The economic situation is
 DAG> starting to look a little bit better.  Might even be able to have next
 DAG> month's rent paid by the end of next week.  If that happens there's
 DAG> some definite forward motion [finally] taking place.

That does sound like things are stabilizing a bit more...  :)
 
 NB>> Sounds quite promising...  paycheck to paycheck is better than no
 NB>> paycheck at all... but it certainly is nicer to have a reasonable
 NB>> amount coming in regularly...  :)
 DAG> It's going up.  Slowly but surely.  For what it's worth the issue
 DAG> right now isn't _my_ productivity level, either.  It's the fact that
 DAG> the project manager has a limited amount of time.  I'm usually sitting
 DAG> here wanting to put in more hours every day, but I'm waiting on his
 DAG> schedule to free up a bit so that I can get more bits carved off that I
 DAG> can chew easier.  That shouldn't be so much of a problem in the future,
 DAG> but with the familiarity I have with the stack that their site is
 DAG> deployed with I really need smaller chunks carved off for me...

Yeah, as you get more familiar with the whole project, you'll be able to
handle bigger chunks at a time...

 DAG> Especially when the people reporting the problems don't even know
 DAG> enough about the situation to give me enough information to diagnose...

Par for the course, though...  :)

 DAG> Shouldn't have to worry about anything like that with a little more
 DAG> experience, at least. Totally still a virgin on this 'magento' suite,
 DAG> though.  :) 

You'll get there... :)  

 NB>> So, if I understand correctly, you went with some others in a van to go
 NB>> camping...?  A couple of families with kids...?  Was this some sort of
 NB>> organized program, or something that people just got together to do...?
 NB>> Sounds like a long trip... hard for kids to be cooped up that long...
 DAG> It was a long trip, definitely.  It was myself, my roomie, his
 DAG> girlfriend, and her two kids (along with my son) in a mini-van.  I
 DAG> think that I'm somewhat spoiled, because my son is so good at dealing
 DAG> with trips like that.  He's _NEVER_ done anything like that, even when
 DAG> he was 4-5, even on 15+ hour drives. He just doesn't act that way. 

And some kids just travel better than others...  I remember taking my
son on long trips, just him and me, when he was only about 6... I
remember joking about how I must be out of my mind, to even consider
that sort of trip, but he was just fine... Until he actually started
driving his own vehicles, he'd be asleep within 10 minutes, and probably
sleep the entire trip, more or less...  ;)

 DAG> Different strokes for different folks, I've got to remember...  Not
 DAG> every parent has been able to spend as much time with their kids as I
 DAG> was able to for the first 6 years with my little man, either.  I've
 DAG> been lucky in a whole lot of areas. 

Good thing to think about and remember...  :)  Another way of keeping
perspective...  :)

 NB>> Yes, at least he and the other kids had a chance to run and play... and
 NB>> sleep outside for the night...  ;)  Too bad it wasn't a little longer in
 NB>> the camping phase, for the long trip there and back...
 DAG> They probably reaped a lot more benefit from the whole situation
 DAG> than the adults did.  They had the entire 18 hours, sans sleeping time,
 DAG> frolicking in the woods and having a blast.  It was just the van trips
 DAG> that were tough for them, and I think really only the one.  The kids
 DAG> seem much more able to tune out the cries of one of their own than the
 DAG> cranky old farts.  ;) 

How old was the kid that was having the meltdown(s)...?  Some kids just
don't travel well, either... ;(

 DAG> But it was great to see my son (and the other
 DAG> kids) being able to have such a blast for such a long stretch of time
 DAG> out there.  Especially after the isolation that my poor little guy has
 DAG> to endure (as I've whined about endlessly ;). 

I'm glad that it was generally a good trip... with real benefits... :)

 NB>> That still gives at least 50% chance that it WON'T happen...  :) 
 NB>> Maybe not even in your lifetime...  ;)
 DAG> Well I've always been one of those people with a 'can-do' attitude. 
 DAG> Even when it comes to the Earth 'can-do'ing an earthquake to try to
 DAG> chuck me off into space.  ;)

One does need to draw the line somewhere... ;)
 
 DAG> That reminds me I haven't yet meditated today.  ;)  I'm working on
 DAG> it, every little slice at a time.  I find that it's definitely showing
 DAG> benefits, too. Like those nightly revisitation and haunting hours that
 DAG> I've mentioned before. When I haven't had way too much coffee or done
 DAG> anything else that spikes my anxiety uncontrolably, I find I'm having a
 DAG> much easier time banishing such thoughts.  It just takes me a few
 DAG> minutes to concentrate on releasing those circular chains of thought, a
 DAG> few minutes to concentrate on something happy like my son playing in
 DAG> the bathtub and cackling when he was 3, and then I'm good to go. 
 DAG> Sometimes it's a little tougher than that, but not so often. Either
 DAG> way, it's a lifesaver when I'm trying to go to sleep.  I was out of
 DAG> sorts on the camping trip, but I bet in areas where I'm having
 DAG> illogical phobias or paranoia like in the earthquake/vulcanism scenerio
 DAG> it'd probably help quite a bit, as well.  As I seem to recall I was way
 DAG> hopped up on coffee because I hadn't had nearly enough sleep the night
 DAG> before... 

Yup... sounds quite reasonable...  Keeping the illogical (mostly)
phobias at bay is a good thing, and I can see where the meditation, or
at least some diverting concentrations could help with that... and
minimizing the coffee jitters couldn't hurt, either...  ;)

 NB>> Offline readers are quite the godsend at times, to be sure... :)
 NB>> Especially since I'm in DOS, not exactly what you'd call a
 NB>> multi-tasking environment...  ;)

 DAG> Wow.  Are you using DOS because of older hardware?  Just curious... 

Partly, and mostly by choice.  I don't get along well with mice and
other tracking devices, and I am quite content with command line... This
computer has some extra commands, some from *nix, and some from small
utilities my resident wizard has written... And I have some good
software for the things I do... :)

 DAG> There are a few drop-in replacements for DOS (like TSX-11) that'll give
 DAG> you a DOS compatible environment that can support some multitasking, I
 DAG> believe.  I mean not that there's anything wrong with working linear;
 DAG> it's probably a lot better for productivity and focus.  :)

That, too...  :)  

 DAG> I just realized I've still got some old QWK packets sitting here
 DAG> from other BBSes that I was going to read before I had to reinstall my
 DAG> operating system for the umpteenth time here, too.  I'll have to break
 DAG> out metamail pretty quick here, probably.  Hell, it might be easier to
 DAG> use that even for my own BBS; I've found an issue lately where if I go
 DAG> take too long of a break from composing a message it logs me out for
 DAG> some reason, and I lose whatever I've already written.  Not sure what
 DAG> setting I toggled to cause that evil, but I'm not finding it to set it
 DAG> back easily... Best wishes!

At the very least, I suppose you'll just have to be sufficiently
efficient to finish composing the message in the one sitting...
apparently the bbs is seeing too long of a period of inactivity...
that's probably the setting, wherever it might be hiding... 

ttyl       neb

... 12 Hours Of Work!! What Do You Mean Disk Error??

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