Caffeinated Fish
Coffee really is the elixir of gods. Or was that beer? I forget. Either way, I’m sitting here with a tall Mocha and life is good again. This is usually the part of my writing where distraction sets in, and right on schedule, it’s ugly mug shows up. I’ve focused my life so much around my new job that the only thoughts that fly through my ears relate to work. Since I don’t talk about that here, I find myself with little to talk about. That’s where the yummy caffeine comes in.
The castle is doing well, if you were wondering. Besides unpacking and having the boxes carted off, I’ve not done much in the way of decorating. I’ve hung only one picture, and it’s in my reading room, which is rather funny because that’s the only room in my house with no furniture. I’m still not sure what a reading room is, but I know it’s something of a cross between a study and a hallway. I’m going to love writing on the furniture that will eventually inhabit the room: I’m thinking about plushy, old-school (think pipe smoking but without the sweet smoke, or pipe, or fire, or tobacco, or, you get the idea) leather chairs with matching ottomans and some small tables to hold the, yes, you’re getting good at this guessing, yummy caffeinated drinks. But for now, the picture hanging on the wall mocks me.
The last time I sat down with a cup of coffee to write I was sitting in the bucks of stars in Houston, Texas, lamenting my fate. Lamenting is not the right word. I wasn’t mournful about the change, it’s just that the change was all encompassing. I had trouble focusing on the writing, even with sweet caffeine scouring my veins. I’m still in the aftershocks of that change. While life is becoming more settled, my mind still races through empty corridors most nights. I’ve not had the free time, the free weekends, to sit down and evaluate everything that is happening. I’m not sure I even want to evaluate it. When you’re happy, it’s not always good to see what’s waiting under the covers. That made little sense. What I meant to say is that when you’re excited about a gift, it’s sometimes disappointing to unwrap it. That is, receiving a gift is sometimes nicer than the gift itself. Damn, now I’m babbling. I’ll move on now before I scare myself with my incoherence.
I’ve spent the last few days rethinking the inner workings of this site. I’ve started work on migrating my Linux/Apache/PHP server to an XP Pro/IIS/ASP.NET+C# server. I’m sure you’re asking yourself why. (I’ve tried to guess your thoughts a little too often in this musing. It’s a habit of mine. I tend to speak better when I have someone to bounce ideas off. The fact that you’re not actually there, well, at least not there when I’m writing this, is probably a sign of insanity. Hell, this whole aside is a sign of insanity and will be used in my commitment hearings. Your honor, I am sane. There are little people reading this while I write it. They’re even telling me what they’re thinking as I type. They’re my green, invisible, intangible, space-alien friends. Really. Yes, your honor, they are green. No, your honor, I don’t know how I know they’re green since they’re invisible, but trust me on this, they are. So you say I should follow these nice men in the white suits? Will they bring me more yummy caffeine? Oh, something better, you say? Egg-cellent.)
Anyway, as I was saying, I wanted to learn a new language (C#) and cut off my own head by trying to administer yet another un-administrable platform. I remember the weeks and months it took to set up my Linux box and get Apache and PHP to run on it. That fun is just starting with IIS. At least IIS supports C# out of the box. I’ve not made much progress. Two days ago, I thought I was actually getting somewhere. I went to sleep (too late, of course) having figured a few things out and with a number of possible avenues for development. When I plopped down in front of my computer yesterday, all that progress disappeared. I won’t bore you with the difficulties, but I went to sleep last night discouraged and lamenting (there’s the proper use of that word) my new website design.
Not that you will notice much of a change. Most of the external workings will remain the same (except for some minor, cosmetic changes). I’m focusing (for now) on migrating the internal workings to the new server, and redoing the generation of the pages and pictures. The impetus for the change, for those technically minded, was my frustration with PHP’s object-oriented design (actually, the lack of a good OOD). Of course, the opportunity to play with a new language and program again was another benefit.
Now that I’ve cleared that techno-babble from my mind, I can get back to the more important issues. Julie is coming up this weekend! She’s been traveling to Seattle often, which is a nice break from all my travels to Newport Beach. She’s in a tough rotation now, working nights in the OB (that’s the baby-delivery-thingy place) for the past few weeks, and that together with lack of sleep and her favorite fish dying yesterday, have left her in a rather strange place. But I’m sure my wonderfully planned weekend of sleeping and…umm…sleeping will get her back on track. Sleeping in the castle is exceptionally peaceful. You should try it one day (hint, hint: visit me!).
Getting back to her poor fish, her golden Japanese algae sucker jumped out of her fish tank the day before yesterday. When we first bought him (I’m assuming it’s a he, although with algae fish, you never can know—or, at least, I can never know), he was rather timid. He hid in the door of the taller Pagoda that made the fish tank look more like a city then a, you know, glass box. He grew from less than half an inch to more than three inches, and moved to the smaller Pagoda with the larger door. As he grew bigger and we added more fish to the tank, he became aggressive, swimming around quickly to protect his underwater domain. After Julie found him, she performed an investigation that would have made CSI proud. Julie now figures it was during one of his aggressive swims that he jumped up through the back of the fish tank. (She didn’t find a suicide note, but the neon fish stuck with their story that they were swimming on the bottom of the tank when he jumped.) Julie found the proud algae sucker the next day behind the fish tank. I imagine he was stiff and rather white. My only regret was that it was too late to fry him up. But don’t tell Julie that. She sees each fish that dies (and there have been many dead fish in her tank) as a personal failing. R.I.P., algae sucker.
I’ve babbled enough for one day. From the length of this post, one thing is clear: caffeine is a good thing, a very good thing.