Personal

My eight years of living in Northfield is coming to an end. Before I go, I'd like to document a handful of things about my adopted hometown. First up: My five favorite places in Northfield...

I've outgrown the "Gotta have that thing on TV!" syndrome that you have as a kid.  Call me jaded, but I simply believe almost nothing that I see on television any more.  "Local News" is an abomination, I don't really need the nifty new Zocor/Valtrex/Ambien (ZoVaxAm) triple pill, and the women on Deal or No Deal have so much plastic in them that they could be recycled into some sort of meta-ironic credit card.

That being said, the only thing that I can recall seeing on TV and going "HULK MUST HAVE" in the past decade is that speckled epoxy garage floor coating.  How boring am I?  Yeah, I don't know why, but when I first saw it demoed it was as if cupid sprang out of the TV and shot me in the cement portion of my heart that I wasn't aware of before.

And this lead to that pining heartbreak we're all so familiar with.  While I did have that two components that one needs (a garage, $50), the garage was being used as... well, as a garage.  And as such, it had a car, bikes, a lawn mower, tools, various half-inflated basketballs, an old set of lawn jarts, and the like.  There were corners of the garage that I hadn't seen since we moved in in 2000.  Furthermore I was married, which meant that I couldn't simply turn the garage inside out and dump everything on the lawn for a week.  ("Hon, the reason you have to park a half block away is that the driveway is filled with the snowblower, winter shovels, and the broken kiddie pool that I've promised to fix for two years now so that I can put some speckled paint on the garage floor.  Also, it will take one week.  Hon?  Where are you going?")

So I spent several years mooning over the boxes in the hardware store.  I have this abject fear that products I want will be discontinued before I get a chance to try them.  And so every so often I'd wander over and confirm that yes, the boxes were still there.  I'd button hole the employees with insane badgering questions - "You're going to restock the Qwik-Crete Slate Gray Epoxy Dura-Coat Finish 001-425 soon, right?  Right??!"

And then we bought a different house.  And the skies cleared, the sun came out, and God came down and gave me a high-five.  People would ask me what I liked about the new house and I'd say "The unfinished cement floor in the garage."  The time had come.

It's good that we've got a few weeks before we move in because this sh*t is involved, boy-o. Here are the steps to a proper epoxy-ied floor:

1. Sweep out the garage completely.
2. Wet floor.
3. Apply de-greaser/etching compound.  Vicious, nasty stuff.
4. Scrub compound in.
5. Wash compound out.
6. Allow this to dry for 24 hours.
7. Re-sweep garage.  Nature abhors a swept floor.
8. Mix two part epoxy compound.  Stir for at least three minutes.
9. Wait 30 minutes for some sort of mystery chemical reaction to happen in the paint can.
10. Paranoia sets in as I resweep yet again.  How many leaves can blow into a garage in thirty minutes?  Answer: one million.
11. Clock starts ticking.  I've got 2 1/2 hours to apply the paint before... well, it doesn't say.  It only says you've got 2 1/2 hours.  Considering that the paint can is boiling like a witches' cauldron I don't doubt it.
12. Paint garage floor.
13. Sprinkle those little color flakes.  Worry about randomness.
14. Let dry for three days.

So I'm currently at day 1 of step 14.  The work is done, now I just need to summon the patience to do nothing for another 48 hours.  It's not easy.  But it's done.  I couldn't be happier.

Time to start watching commercials again.  I'll be looking for my project for 2014.

Here's an important tip for all you kids out there: if you break something, pretend that you meant to do it. 'I meant to drop that beer bottle, so I can cut your pretty face!' or 'I meant to wreck the old website because I wanted to try out some new features.' As it is with the kid who gets a new car for his 16th birthday and runs into the corner of the garage, I drove NORLUG.org straight into the lake after getting the keys from the newly relocated Chip Cuccio.

So, I sent out a message to the mailing saying 'New Features Coming Soon' and set out to import everything into a different system, one that I can put into reverse without running over the cat.

And so I did. And it was good. It's got a bunch of nifty new ideas running behind it and if I ever get fifteen more free minutes, it will have a bunch more new ideas. Until then, she's served a nice purpose for me - experience I'm going to need when we move Northfield.org into 2007.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I forgot the parking brake and that I just saw the website rolling down the hill backwards.

I admit that I've been a little lax as of late getting the family updates out. I've been super, super busy - both at work and at home. Things will settle down soon though. The holidays will pass, I'm coming to the end of my six-year term on the Northfield Public Library board and a bunch of other things.

Enough about me. This past weekend found us attending our second Northfield Montessori Christmas program. This year was much more successful than the last. The stage fright is about a quarter as strong as it used to be and she's more comfortable with the teachers and students. She walked up there, sang the songs, and actually watched a few other kids freak out without falling prey to it herself. We were quite proud of our kiddo.

I don't often get political on this site - that's not it's purpose, but I've seen too many people lose their jobs to outsourcing. This is not a Republican/Democrat issue, especially since both parties have been complicit in allowing this to happen. If you make your living as a programmer in the US, it is imperative that you spend some of your free time protecting your position, even if it's not currently in jeopardy.
This is why I joined the "Programmer's Guild":http://www.programmersguild.org/. It's a collection of professionals who are dedicated towards improving the work and workplaces of technical workers. I rely on them to do the work that I can't - monitor the U.S. Congress for legislative threats to my job - whether technical (Network Neutrality) or social (Outsourcing).If you make your living with technology, consider joining this group.