Went to visit Uncle Victor today at Shore Rehabilitation Institute in Brick. Uncle Victor is ~ 89 years old and having heart trouble. Uncle Victor's deceased wife, Gaida Dallas, was my Mom's cousin. This relationship is a little cloudy to me at this moment.
Uncle Victor and I spent some time together in my pre teen years. He was pretty handy in carpentry and came over to my house to work on some projects w/ me. Together we built large, wooden birdhouses, a bookcase w/ a lockable cabinet, a square table made from scrap lumber and he even assembled our bakyard toolshed/clubhouse. Years later, as an adult, I learned that my Mom had asked him to do these things w/ me. Her thinking was that I needed to do some "guy" projects and spend a little time w/ a male relative. This point was raised simply because my father had moved out when i was two and didn't spend much time or provide much "guy" influence to me.
Either way, I'm glad Uncle Victor spent that time w/ me. He could easily have declined my Mom's inuiries. I lost touch w/ Uncle Victor in my teen years an then saw him occaisonally at family events over the lat 15 years. A week or so ago Mom told me that Victor was in the hospital w/ heart trouble. Visiting him today, we made small talk, sister an I catching him up on the doings of our kids and holiday celebrations. Somehow, the conversation turned to him telling of his odyssey from living in Latvia in the 1930s to ending up in Lakewood, NJ after WWII. My Mom's side of the family is from Latvia and emigrated to America fleeing the Soviets in 1940. He left out alot of details such as exact dates and durations, places and even confused my grandparents w/ a couple of other Latvian traveling partners. Such is not surprising when recalling 60 odd years from one's memory. Below is my capturing of his tale.
Latvia in 1930s. War started in 30s. Germans came into latvia in 1930s. Victor had government job. changed his name to Dallas cuz it was easier for folks to pronounce. said "dallas" was a popular name at that time and place. it was easy for him to explain the pronounciation, "it's like Dallas, Texas" he would say.
Soviets came into Latvia and Victor left w/ wife Gaida. Victor met Gaida when her mother, who worked for the gov't, brought her to the City from where she was living in the country. they dated for a year before marrying. left latvia on a ship to poland (tho isn't poland landlocked?). went thru warsaw.
ended up in prague, czechloslavakia. then a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in germany for years. drove a truck in a company formed by latvian DPs. this company was hired to maintain vehicles, jeeps and trucks, for the american army. employed by american army, paid by german gov't. still receives pension from german gov't today.
met and befriended fellow latvian DP, John Drule, wife mary and ther young son, John (?). Victor had boy Uldis. Uldis and John Jr. came to America, went to Lakewood schools together. uldis went to school for architecture and engineering. uldis ended up in vietnam, john did not. As victor said "at age 21, uldis was at a good age for the army..." does this mean he was drafted? uldis helped build an airstrip in Danang. He drove jeep over a land mine and "that was it". not sure what he meant here cuz uldis came back to USA, got married, divorced and later died of alcoholism.
coming to america. DPs were given the opportunity to go to america, esp if they were healthy, young and could work. John Drule's wife Mary had distant relative in AMerica that wrote a letter of reccomendation for them all to come to America. victor and his small family fit this bill, applied and were accepted. had to travel to latvia to take a ship to hoboken, NJ. took train from NYC to lakewood.

3 days in to vacation. got some stuff done today. spent 3 hours or so solo w/ baby tonight. boy was it rough. i seem to have lost all of my baby skills. He spent most of the time fussing or crying. I know that I was not interpreting his signals properly and I felt quite clueless.
Starting to believe that my boss is just out to do his thing and really doesn't know or care all that much about the efforts of the rest of the office. that is, his staff, myself includ3ed. You see, Bossy is so far up the ass of a particular state agency that he is hoping that they will hire him and his yesman fulltime. Can't say that I blanme him, agency X has $$, authority and the will to do good work. Whenever I attemtp to branch out and start something on my own at work, I run into bossy and a brick wall.
Very cold today. Air masss from Canada dropped the temp into single digits this morning. More of the same tomorrow. The house is drafty and chilly. HAd been reading up hyronic heating systems last nite a little. Trying to understand the nature of our lack of water pressure problem. If I understand it, maybe I can attend to it over the winter and put off purchasing a new heating system for $10k!
Wind was blowing white caps on the river at the Township boat ramp today. It just looked cold. The waves would have been too much for comfort in the kayak. I did see a tug boat coming up stream later today w/o a fuss over wind or wave.

First day of 11 vacation days. had the 2 older kids this morning. i slept in daughter's bed w/ no sheets last night. Inadvertantly chased Fred the dog off of her bed as he jumped down and left for roomier sleeping quarters.
Liesurely morning as wifey took the baby out xmas shopping until noon. kids and i had breakfast and carried books and other boxes of my stuff from the 3rd floor to the Lab in the basement. daughter lost a front tooth this morning when we were playing "tickle monster". Her tooth caught on my watch as she dropped to the floor. Only a slight pressure of resistance and out the tooth came. She said that it hadn't been loose at all. felt bad cux it was throbbing and she was kinda freaked out about it for awhile. But then, like 5 year olds do, she was back to her old self, going a million miles an hour.
feel like all that i do is tell son1 NOT to do things. lately he is crazed and seems to enjoy pushing people's buttons, especially his sister's.
Took the kids for a walk thru the park this afternoon. they brought oscar the daschund w/ us on a leash. been playing alot of civ this evening and even snuck a round or two at a time during the day.
i feel that it is important to write in this journal. important to leave some legacy of myself on this day. perhaps to be read by my descendants or simply by myself in months to come. Right now, it seems good enough just to write, even if poorly, rather than not write at all.

went kayaking on the delaware today. a little windy, weather.com said 14mph. blowing up river at the township boat ramp. The otter, my kayak, is so much faster and smoother than that little sit on top i paddled on Key Biscayne.

Paddled into the wind first cuz was concerned about the waves and that they were getting higher. Son1 and I had checked the conditions at the boat ramp an hour or so earlier and though the wind was blowing, there was barely a ripple on the water's surface. going into the wind was a little work cuz the frequency of the waves was pretty high. i'd push over a big one and then bounce over the next 2 and get wet w/ spray from the side of the bow. Coming back was even spookier. i was traveling a little slower than the waves and they some up behind the boat and push you along. i'd kinda ride in the trough for several seconds and then the wave would move under me. the top of the wave would almost be at the gunwale which was a little unnerving.
Of course, the waves were traveling at 45 degree angles into the south bank. So i spent much effort trying not to get pushed into that south shore while returning. Sometimes i'd overcompensate and get a little bit broadside to the waves. Them coming at me from behind on the port side. while i knew i could siply float over such a wave, the high frequency had me concerned that subsequent waves would hit the boat while i was in the trough or coming down the backside of the previous wave. Needless to say, these conditions had me pretty frazzled though it was fun. I expended alot of energy fighting the waves, especially on the way back. There must be a way to "go with it" more as the conditions are impossible to over power for long.

An old timer was walking his chocolate lab, Fred, when i came in. He gave me a hand loading the Otter and we chatted for a minute. He told me about his 2 old friends in South Carolina that make folding kayaks, Fold Boat. He also told of an old friend that used to make fiberglass boats and sell them to Sears, starting in the 1960s. Eventually his employees starting getting sick from the manufacturing process. The friend tried to clean up the manufacturing process and make it safe for his workers. He even made sure his employees and their families were taken care of financially for health and life insurance. then he closed up shop, cleaned up the contaminated manufacturing site and sold the business. The old timer was proud of friend and made a comment that I am still pondering. He said "That wasn't any fucking liberal bullshit. that was good old conservative fucking values." Taking care of one's employees and responsibility for the natural environment over profits sound pretty liberal to me. But what do I know. I'm just a civil servant and a disgruntled and bitter one at that.

still dry. its been over 9 months...

geeked out in the pipe room at home last night. after i put the 2 kids to bed, had the night tom myself. wifey was out w/ the baby you see. i just played civ 3, setup my wreless router as its own subnet and sis some cleanup on sistah2's computer. ran ad aware, removed ~ 12 nasties, updated and repaired virus software and ran a full scan. it came up clean. enabled telnet on that machine (win2k pro) and created a local accouht for me. now i can telnet in and perform some admin tasks if needed. also creasted shares on all of the drive partitions. go nerd go!

they had already loaded a bunch of chareware such as bear share, yahoo IM and mail, and something called kiwialpha. they are likely to get hosed sooner or later. my concern is that they will get infected w/ a nasty virus or similar and it will spread acoross the house network. while such a casewould be annoying if my 2 machines got infected, if wifey's work PC got infected that would be serious. i would like to figure out a way to prevent them from accessing other hosts on the network completely. one solution is to run software firewalls on all other machines that block all traffic from the 3rd floor infectious monsters. there must be a more elegant way. hmm...

baby G is getting very smiley these days in his 3rd month of life. he also like when i carry him. he would often be left in baby seat to sleep or zone out but now he prefers to be held/carried when he is not sleeping. i carry him iin my left arm so that he is facing forward. he seems to like that position cuz , i think, he can see where we are going and things around him.

u know, it is amazing... one can give to others and no one blinks an eye. no recognition of the sacrifice require for the giving. likewise, one can be selfish and there is often zero repercussions. people and the world that people create let one be, either way.
as a naive young lad, i used to think that being good and doing good would be recognized. this clearly is not necessarily true. often, the opposite of right is rewarded, sometimes handomsly. think of the soviets as they took over other countries and harvested their treasuries. business is the same. is microsoft really the best product or did they simply have the best business sense and a lots of luck back in the 80s when they got their OS on the IBM pc? Same goes for ESRI.
Right does not mean might. how wrong is that? what am i supposed to teach my kids? i want to teach them (generally) all the philosophies of good yet to survive in this world they must know the philosophies of our economic (& sociual, etc) systems.

this is an old draft post in my blogger blog that has no publish date. i do not remember writing it (sounds like i was a little sloshed) so just posting it w/ today's date 12/8/04.

at the office tonight typing in some old entries from 2001 that i had on paper in a spiral notebook on a shelf. hoping that at work i can now move to management. i'm ready to take the plunge. the technical details of IT projects are still interesting to me but they seem frustrating and don't hold my attntion long. i guess that i now realize that any IT project can be donw, it is merely a matter of $$ or people or the right tools.

the exciting challenges that i now see are charting a vision for this office and moving forward over a few years. i'm excited to dive in and meet w/ folks at state agencies to find out what they need ans where they are w/ GIS. Excited to research what other states are doing and learn from their successes. excited to plant the vision and go after resources to make it happen. excited to plan my destiny and be held accountable for it. making a point of "inserting myself" into any issue,project or group that might be beneficial to getting leadership responsibilities.

at home things are a little intense now that baby G is here. personal time is really only available at night and usually at the expense of sleep. by then i'm too tired to do much more than snack and watch TV anyway.

wifey is tressed too and is leaning more and more on her sisters and mom for support. they are being great w/ the support but they drain the life out of me in large doses. ugh.

Back from Miami. Spent most of my time at the conference or preparing for my presentation...but. I did get to Key Biscayne and visited Cape Florida State park on the southern end of the island. The water was so warm (78 degrees), i just had to jump in. beautiful white sandy bottom and zero waves in the ocean. Wondering if there is a reef out there to break the ocean waves..?

Next day rented a sit on top kayak also on key biscayne. spent an hour paddling and was pretty worn out. it was allot harder than paddling on the Delaware w/ the swells an all. Even though the water was relatively calm, the ocean had its own idea of where my little boat should go. So about 10 mins from coming in, as i zone out and my shoulders burn w/ lactic acid, i'm startled by a sudden "WHOOSH" sound ahead of the boat. Holy crap! A manta ray as wide as my outstretched arms has just leapt 4 feet into the air about 40-50ft ahead of the bow. Freaked me out. I was only in 4 feet of water and that guy was BIG and definitely a better master of this watery medium than I. Awesome.

Sunny, low 80s and not humid. nice place to be in december.

still dry. its been over 9 months. the holidays are pretty tough not drinking but so far so good. Thanksgiving wasn't difficult. I'm a little concerned about being locked in the house so much this winter. its dark by 5pm and only so much that one can do indoors while entertaining a 4 and 5 year old each evening.