Yes, I'm back -- yet again! I suppose it's ironic that, pretty much
by definition, when nothing is going on in my life, I have plenty of
time to tell you about it, but when I have plenty going on in my life,
I have little time to tell you about it. Judging by the long gap since
my last update, you can infer that my life has been busy.
Four major events have occurred in the last couple of months. In increasing
order of importance: I proposed completely changing my responsibilities
at work; I bought a new computer; I moved; and my mother passed away.
The first one isn't particularly interesting to talk about. For the last
couple of years, I've been responsible for the web site at the Illinois
EPA. In recent months it has become increasingly apparent to me that
our web development process just isn't working very well. Basically, if
anyone wants something put on our web site, they send it to me. This
means, first of all, that I'm an extremely busy fellow, particularly
since the web site is only one of my job duties. Secondly, it means
that our web site has a random hodge-podge of information, pretty much
unconnected and disorganized. There might be the most extremely
detailed information about one program area, but not even the most
basic information about another program area. This makes it difficult
to find information, to say the least.
I wrote up an 8-page memo
discussing the problems with our current procedures and proposing,
basically, that I turn over 90% of web development responsibilities to
a team of a dozen people, drawn from the rest of the agency. That would
free me up to do things like Java programming and writing database
queries, rather than what has evolved into basically glorified word
processing.
The second event was buying a new computer. What a
story that makes! Way back on July 29, I ordered a new computer from
Gateway -- a 400MHz Pentium II with 128MB RAM, Voodoo2 3D video card,
DVD drive, ZIP, tape backup, theater sound system, etc. It was
scheduled to ship on August 5. Well, on August 7 I received a postcard
from Gateway, saying that "due to circumstances beyond our control," my
order was delayed and would ship by August 21. Oh, bother. Time passed.
On August 21, I received a postcard from Gateway saying that "due to
circumstances beyond our control," my order was delayed and would ship
by September 22. Ack! Should I cancel my order, or keep it? Decisions,
decisions.
Then I learned that Intel would be releasing the
450MHz Pentium II on August 30. That would mean I could change my order
to the faster chip. Sure, why not. So, after Gateway announces that
they are selling 450MHz systems, I call them and change my order. There
is plenty of confusion with getting the order changed, and eventually
the sales critter just starts over from scratch and gives me a new
order number. Time passes. September 22 comes and goes. Finally, on
October 5, my new computer arrives -- twice!
Yes, sure enough,
when I was given a new order number, the sales critter somehow managed
to not cancel the previous order, so when the UPS truck rolled up, out
hopped two computers. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the
fact that Gateway also charged my credit card for two computers.
Well,
eventually I got all of that straightened out, so I am now the proud
owner of a brand spanking new screaming demon of a computer -- that
can't receive e-mail! Yes, somehow or other I managed to totally hose
the e-mail software on this machine. It came with Microsoft Home
Essentials preinstalled. I owned Microsoft Office 97, which I loaded. I
then downloaded the Office service release patch and installed it.
Unbeknownst
to me, although Office 97 and Home Essentials both include Word 97,
they install in separate directories. This means two copies of Word 97
are on the machine. My suspicion is that the service release patch saw
the two copies, got confused, and patched the wrong one. Microsoft
Outlook uses Word as its text editor, so when I went to start Outlook,
it complained about a wrong DLL version when attempting to start Word.
When I received the error message, I decided to uninstall Outlook and
start over. Somewhere in that process I uninstalled something that I
shouldn't have, and now my Internet e-mail is totally hosed. Since then
I've been using my old computer to read e-mail, which isn't the most
convenient thing in the world, but it works. I'm sure I'll eventually
get e-mail working on this machine, but I've been too busy (naturally)
to work on it!
Next, after getting my new computer in early
October, I moved at the end of October! This meant that the middle of
October was spent packing pretty much every waking moment when I was
home. Actually, it began with me rather calmly going through
everything, carefully sorting things, discarding junk, and generally
being quite organized. As time passed, however, there was less sorting,
less discarding, and more frantically tossing into boxes! I moved
roughly 150 boxes of stuff, and I'll guess that probably a third of
that is stuff that I'll just wind up throwing out -- or else just
shoving into the back of closets like I did at the old place!
Anyway,
I really like my new place -- I'm renting a house! Here are the specs:
3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2-car garage, great room, large kitchen,
breakfast nook, fireplace, and deck! It's at the end of a very short
cul de sac on the extreme west end of Springfield, so there is
virtually no traffic. Although it's in the city limits, it's almost in
the country. You can go three blocks to a cornfield and not much
farther will bring you to horses!
My favorite room, however, is
the great room. It's very large (naturally), with a cathedral ceiling,
a fireplace, and sliding glass doors leading out onto a deck in the
back yard. I love it! The back yard itself is filled with plenty of
trees, particularly pine trees, and I love that, too. In short, I like
my new place!
Unfortunately, two days after I moved, I received a
phone call from Dad saying that Mom was in the hospital and that she
had decided that she would refuse any further treatment. She had been
diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma 12 years ago. She underwent chemo
and fought it off, but a few years ago it returned. She had more
treatments, but it was a downhill struggle.
For the last year or
so she had been going into the hospital quite a bit. She was never
bedridden for months at a time or anything like that, but she would
have to go back to the hospital numerous times every month for yet
another treatment or another test. Then she began having problems with
an extremely low blood count. She kept going back to the hospital and
getting blood transfusions, but they can't give you white blood cells,
because they would simply fight against your body. As a result she was
extremely susceptible to infection, and eventually got pneumonia. At
that point she decided that she was tired of the fight, so she told the
doctors that she didn't want any more antibiotics to fight off the
infection.
I received Dad's call on Monday, November 2, which was
the day my phone service was connected at the new place. Dad said that
it would just be a matter of days. After I hung up the phone I cried my
eyes out for several minutes. It wasn't just because I was losing my
mother, which was bad enough. It was also simply stress. For weeks I
had been going nonstop, getting ready for the move, and just went it
seemed like things were about to get better, they very abruptly had
gotten much worse. And, oddly enough, it was also because I would never
been able to show her my new home. I wanted to show her the great room,
the fireplace, the deck out back, the pine trees -- but now I never
could. The day before I had used my camcorder to videotape a very brief
tour of the place. I decided to bring the camcorder and tape with me to
the hospital. If she seemed up to it, I could play back the tape in the
camcorder and she could watch it in the viewfinder.
So on Monday
I drove down to St. Louis to see Mom at the hospital. All of her
sisters and her brother were there. She was still in pretty good shape
at that point and was in good spirits. She actually looked
significantly better than she had when I had seen her in the hospital a
couple of weeks before that. It was hard to believe that she would be
dead in a few days. I eventually showed her the videotape of the new
house, which she seemed to enjoy. It didn't really show things very
well, because I hadn't expected this to be my only opportunity, but it
was all I had.
After a few hours I drove back to Springfield. My
brother flew into St. Louis from Austin later that night. The next day
(Tuesday) after visiting with her, he drive up to Springfield to stay
overnight with me. On Wednesday we drove back down to St. Louis to see
Mom again. When we arrived there was a sign on her door telling
visitors to go to the nurse's station. She had passed away about an
hour before we had arrived.
I took it well, but I was quite
surprised that she had gone so quickly. On Monday she was doing quite
well, so I had guess she would last until Friday. It just really hadn't
occurred to me when I left her on Monday that it would be the last time
I would see her.
I suspected that Dad would prefer to have some
time alone, just to wander about the house and cry without worrying
about who saw, so Ross and I spent Wednesday night back in Springfield,
then drove down to Dad's place on Thursday. He later thanked us for
that, so I guess my suspicion was correct.
The visitation was on
Friday night (November 6). I was amazed, first of all, at the amount of
food that neighbors brought over -- meat trays, loaves of bread, fried
chicken, lasagna, even cartons of soda. Keep in mind that this is out
in the country, so when I say "neighbors", I mean "people who might
live 5 miles away."
Secondly, I was amazed at the number of
people who showed up at the visitation. Mom had taught kindergarten in
the area for 30 years, so she and Dad knew plenty of people. Plus there
were people like two of my high school teachers, our neighbors from
when I was in first grade, and the parents of a pseudo-girlfriend of
mine from high school. I was also very impressed by the number of my
brother's friends who showed up. (Six of them served as pall bearers,
actually.)
Thirdly, I was amazed at how quickly all of that food
was consumed by everyone who came by after the visitation and after the
funeral on Saturday.
I guess Mom went about as well as she could.
We all got to see her one last time when she was still in pretty good
shape, and I think it's better to go that way than to spend years in
bed, the way her grandparents spent the end of their lives. She had
talked for quite some time about not wanting to drag things out, so I
was about as prepared as one can expect to be for it.
As for me, I'm doing fine, although I still find myself periodically remembering,
"Oh yeah -- Mom's dead." There's a part of me that keeps expecting this
to be temporary. Ah well. Life goes on.
Dad seems to be doing fine. He came up to visit on Sunday. After showing him the new place, we took his pickup truck down to Oak Express and picked up some nice
bookshelves for the great room. They're six feet tall, four feet wide
-- and already completely filled with books, mainly hardbacks.
He'll eventually head down to south Texas, like every year. They've been
there several times before, so he'll know plenty of people and will
have plenty of things to keep him occupied, like playing shuffleboard,
golfing, and generally enjoying warm weather in the middle of winter.
tired
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