Beau Jackson

Which isn’t saying much I guess.

I had my two lower wisdom teeth pulled out yesterday.  It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but I’ve been popping a couple of lortab every four hours or so and without that I’d be rolling around crying in pain.  As it is, I’ve pretty much just been laying around in bed.  The lortab definitely kills the pain, but it also zonks you out pretty hard.

I was unconscious  for the procedure - sort of.  It wasn’t what I was expecting.  They didn’t use gas.  Instead, whatever it was keeping me asleep came in through an IV.  The difference is that when you’re under the gas, you lose time.  You go out, and you wake up, and there’s no sense of having lost any time, and you’re not aware of anything at all.  With the IV, it’s like you’re just sleeping really hard.  There were a couple of times that I was aware of things happening - something banged against my upper teeth at one point, and I remember saying “ow” to something at another point.

Anyhow, the upside is that once I’ve healed, it won’t ever bother me again.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything meaningful here…sorry ’bout that. I’ve had deadlines at work (big project!) and deadlines at home with the new Spindle And Wheel issue coming out on the 15th. Still, it hasn’t been work, work, work and nothing else. We’ve been to the lake a couple of times. Kept up with the house work (sort of). Saw some fireworks and what-not.

Sometimes I slack a bit here because Allena posts pretty much the same thing I would on her blog, and I don’t want to sound redundant.

I get to go to court tomorrow (whoopie! not). I had a little…ahem…incident in the McDonald’s drive thru. An impatient man a couple of cars behind us decided to yell obscenities out his car window because we weren’t getting out of the way fast enough for him. I replied in kind. Things, shall we say, escalated. Ultimately, I was charged with disturbing the piece. I don’t know if he was or not. Seems like he should be too, but I got out of my car to confront him, and he stayed in his, and apparently that makes all the difference.

In light of that, I’m going to step on my soap box for a moment. A lot of folks like to talk about the good-old-days. One of the themes that comes up often is how people used to take care of things themselves without involving the police or suing. Now, I’m not advocating vigilante justice here, but I do think that certain things ought to be considered settled without involving the police. As an example, if I were to provoke somebody so badly that they came over and beat me up, I would just take my lumps and not call the police - especially if I got a few shots in too. There’s a threshold on that of course. If I provoked somebody and they came over and beat me within an inch of my life with a steel pipe, I’d probably call the police. I guess you can’t really have it both ways. Mostly I’m irritated that this guy provoked me, and then filed charges when I had the gall to do something about it. Sigh. End of rant.

I get to go to an oral surgeon next week (whoopie again! still not). I have a wisdom tooth that is growing at an angle into my molar. Because of this, it will never come up on its own. However, it does occasionally cause an infection which is quite painful. This happens once or twice a year - typically it aches for a day or two and goes away. I live with it because a) oral surgery is expensive even with insurance and b) because the roots of the tooth are wrapped around a nerve and there’s a chance that if they take it out I’ll have a numb spot on my jaw. This time, the infection was much worse. I ended up getting some antibiotics to clear it up, but I was alternating advil and tylenol every two hours to keep the pain tolerable for FIVE DAYS. So, next week - oral surgeon, and I’ll just have to hope he’s good enough to miss the nerve. I’ll also have to hope that he’ll finance things. Last time I checked (years ago) it was going to cost around $1000 to get the tooth out AFTER insurance.

Dominic has been working on a 4-H robotics project that we took to the fair last night. We were actually a few minutes late past the entry deadline, but they let him enter it anyway. I really dropped the ball on this project of his - he had a couple of broken/lost parts that had to be replaced. I ended up getting parts at Radio Shack last night at about 5:00pm - I got home with them and he was writing up a summary of his project. We all ended up getting in the car and driving to the fair (40 miles or so) and we got there at 7:08pm - entry cut off was at 7:00, but hey…it’s 4-H, they’re used to dealing with kids and the parents that make them late!

Dominic was making repairs to his robot in the car on the way over. They didn’t work. He had a print-out of his code and looked through it and found his bug (my heart swells with pride! My little boy debugs!). Poor kid was very frustrated/flustered when we got there - I think he was ready to just walk away and forget it. He couldn’t get past the “my robot doesn’t work” frame of mind. The judge was very kind though - she had him explain the things he learned, and what it was designed to do (it follows a line around using infra-red sensors). I think she was impressed by the amount of effort he put into the project - which was a lot - and also because he’s truly interested in it. That’s what’s truly important about 4-H. Not that it works, but that you learn and grow. She said she thought it was worth a blue ribbon. I think he’ll be able to take it to the state fair. That would be really cool, especially as he could make his repairs and have a working robot to demonstrate. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Anyhow, those are the highlights.

Beau

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so I thought I’d give a personal update.

We’ve been working like mad on the Spindle And Wheel website and hopefully the work will pay off.  My last post said we had just topped 1000 visitors.  Sometime tonight or tomorrow morning we should top 9000 and we’re over 450 registered users, so it’s been exciting for us to say the least.  We’re actually making a bit of money on the Google AdSense ads.  I’ve been learning a lot about Joomla (the CMS we use for the site).  I’ve written four modules for it, and today finally figured out how to get a module in the admin control panel.  It takes a little hacking, but my module shows up now.  Lot’s of learning, which is what I enjoy most about computers and software development.

On the home front, we’ve been watching a goat for some friends who went to Canada.  It didn’t seem like any big deal since we’re already set up for sheep.  They dropped her off and said something like “oh, and we think she might be pregnant…”.  She had her baby around midnight that night, so I guess she was.  So now we’re goat sitting two goats.  Speaking of which, I work with a guy who raises goats.  We had a little pot-luck at work and he brought some meat balls made of chevon (the fancy name for goat meat).  It was REALLY good!  This goat had a little buck, which they probably won’t want to keep, so maybe they’ll let us have him to butcher in the fall.

I’m firmly convinced that I work for the best employer in the area.   A couple of weeks ago the director of the services group (the group that helps our customers customize our software for their business) stops by my desk and hands me this envelope tied with a ribbon.  Inside is a certificate for a three-day all expense paid vacation for two to the tune of $1500!  I about crapped my pants.  Why did I get it?  For doing my job.  True, my job required me to stay very late a few nights helping to customize a tricky piece of software, but really “thanks for helping out so much” would have been enough.  I’m not turning down the bonus though. ;)

So even though we could go anywhere in the continental U.S., we’re actually staying here in Missouri.  We’re packing up the horses and going on a week-long trail ride down in Eminence.  It’s a package deal that includes three meals a day plus lots of great entertainment at night.  We’re really looking forward to it.  The kids are going to stay with Allena’s folks.  It’ll be the first time we’ve taken a vacation without kids EVER.

William is now a little crawling maniac.  We call him “the pillager” because he plunders and pillages Allena’s basket of yarn, and pretty much everything else he can get his hands on.  He’s on the brink of pulling up on things to try and start walking.

What else?  I traded a computer to a guy I go to church with for a roto-tiller (thanks for the parts Mike!).  Yes, I know I said that roto-tillers are for wimps and that I tilled my garden with the tractor.  I stand corrected.  We have a big net fence all around the garden to keep chickens and sheep out, and I can’t get the tractor in there right now.  The tiller works great, and the garden is not so weedy any more in the part that hasn’t been planted yet.

My truck is running really rough (gotta get a clutch into it and maybe replace the head gasket) and I need to get the hay mower and the hay baler functional (pray for me on that one - doesn’t seem like there’s ever time).  Lots of other chores too, that just seem to always get put off until they can’t be anymore.

That’s about it…but that’s probably more than you wanted to know anyway!

I miss you.

Larry Jackson 9/27/1932 - 12/26/2004