Tungsten Fluff

Brain Dump

Gas prices seem to be going down significantly…despite congressional and presidential inaction.  The guy on NPR this morning said it best, “High prices are the cure for high prices.”  Unusually capitalistic and for them but kudos for saying it.

I paid $3.51 for regular unleaded this weekend.  Tip: get a WalMart gift card and put your gas money on it when you buy groceries (or other Chinese-made, household plastic necessity) then use it at the pump.  You’ll save 3 cents/gallon.

I have not been able to get into any books at all this summer.  Truman didn’t make it past the first chapter and I’m struggling with Jeffrey Sach’s The End of Poverty - again.  A friend at work gave me Rutherford’s Dublin and Russka but, given my track record of late, I have not even tried them.

Well, that’s not totally true, I did make it through Boundaries again and Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover has been in my backpack for several weeks.  Those are both full of life-application skills I have yet to master.

During the grocery run last week, I discovered Sam Adams’ Octoberfest on sale at Sam’s Club.  All of Sam Adams’ seasonal ales and lagers are great – even with the increased price due to the worldwide hops shortage.

School starts for me in a couple of weeks.  I’m taking an online class through my alma mater called Philosophy, Principles and Practices in Management of Quality.  Given the special place the modern quality-by-process mindset has in my heart, this has to be some sort of penance.  Fortunately, the firm is paying.

Back to Normal

I am still around.  My much-needed 2-week vacation was good.  We didn't really travel anywhere as a family - we did four trips in six months last year - so it was cool just to hang out with Julie and the kids and take a breather from work.

We went to a lot of year-end parties at school, hit the pool, saw a movie or two, planted a garden in anticipation of the impending apolcalypse, put in a couple of lime trees (I love limes) and a pair of palms, got the A/C fixed twice, hung out with the neighbors a bit, did driving lessons and job hunting with my oldest...what else...mowed the lawn, read a book.  Trust me, the down-time was great.

RIght before I left on the break, a colleague in Orlando hooked me up with a networking site called Linked-in: http://www.linkedin.com/ and within 4 hours of signing up, I got an email from a college friends in New York.  "Hey," he writes.  "Is this Dave 'Sharky' Bolton?"

I felt like Ben Kenobi in Episode IV.  "Now that's a name haven't heard in a long time."

Don't ask about the nick-name...and don't call me that either.  But, it is kinda cool how this internet thing brings people back together like that.  Now watch, someone is going to Google that 20-year-old nickname and get a hit on me.  Anyway.

I'll have something relatively meaningful to say in a day or two...promise.

Wednesday Night Brain Dump

Mom called on Monday to ask if she and Dad could come down from metropolitan Duluth and visit through Saturday.  How do I say no to that when we've been trying to involve them more since we moved closer?  It's cool watching them interact with the kids - all four of them in their own different way.  Plus, we had ice cream together tonight...I got to blast Zach and Hailey in the mouth with the Redi-Whip straight from the can!

This is one of my favorite recent blog finds.  C'mon.  Laugh at yourself a little.

Mother's Day service at Coast was great! The panel of Moms - wow. I can't remember the last time I saw transparency like that on display in front of a church gathering.

The Shack arrived today from Amazon - along with some other books.  The first couple of chapters have been pretty good.  I didn't intend on reading as much as I did today but the intro really reached out and grabbed me.

Although it's a reprint, this has got to be one of the most ironic posts ever.  The comments are classic.

David Cook made it to the finals on American Idol tonight so we'll be watching next week.  Archuleta is just not my style; dude, find the melody and sing it.  I told a friend at work that my win criteria boils down to, "Would I buy this and listen to it in my car?"  This is not too different from Mr Cowell's viewpoint, "Would someone pay me for the pleasure of listening to this?"  Aside...Did anyone catch the look on Simon's face while Fantasia was up there?

Best House episode ever last night.  Julie and I were both picking our jaws off the floor by the time the credits rolled.  If it had spaceships it would nudge out Battlestar Galactica for the best show on TV.

This took 35 minutes to write.  Do I proof-read and link too much?

Starting to Get Answers

Again, I find myself apologizing to the Tungsten Fluff fan base for the lack of postings lately.  It’s not that nothing has been going on or that I’m not thinking about anything – quite the opposite, in fact.  However, I haven’t had this much to process in a long time and it’s a bit overwhelming.  My wife has a couple of posts that detail a bit more of what we are going through, her in particular…here’s the link.  I’ll wait here until you come back…

OK.  So like I said, a lot to think about.  The diagnoses make a lot of sense to her and me.  The good things about this are that 1) she got in with one of the best docs in the panhandle and 2) this burden – for lack of a better word – finally has a name that she/we can fight.

I’m an engineer and engineers fix things (among other stuff but stick with me) by doing A, B and C steps in a certain order.  When I think I’ve done A, B, C and D - ad infinitum - and the result isn’t what I think it should be I get frustrated.  The fact that it has to do with Julie, my other half, has made finding a solution even more urgent.  This is going to sound bizarre but I’m asking God how exactly He fits into this right now.  Where He fits in the spectrum of suffering has always been debated and I've got two or three post ideas on suffering and personal responsibility and grace...quite a mix, I know.

So I was reminded on Sunday that, “when I’ve done all I know to do, stand.” (Ephesians 6 paraphrase)  Apologies to all the teachers who have taught the “Armor of God” lesson in the last 17 years but for some reason it stuck that time.

Maybe that’s what I need to learn in this is really trust God to help Julie, and us by extension, instead of just giving him lip service and trying to do it myself.

New Category: Life

I had to come up with a new category for my brain dumps.  Current Events just wasn't cutting it.

The last couple of days, I’ve had my head down at my desk buried in paperwork.  I haven’t had to speak to anyone – which has been good.  After a few sentences, I break into an uncontrollable cough.  No congestion or other symptoms; just a hacking that makes communicating very difficult.

No, it didn’t take two months to read unChristian – just that long to review it.  What an excellent read.  I’ve had a pretty involved email conversation about the book’s ideas with a long-time friend in Texas.  Maybe I’ll snip it down and post some of it.

Sleep Update:  After a week of increasing exhaustion using “regular unleaded” Ambien, I finally got the insurance approval for an AmbienCR script.  I don’t have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep all night (indications for Ambien).  The CR seemed to help my brain stay in deep sleep without interruption and I feel rested as a result.  Brain chemistry is definitely interesting.  …Probably the only organ in the human body for which medication can have serious ethical and spiritual implications.  During the Marion Jones dust-up, Radley Balko asked this question: if researchers, students and other intellectual-types used sleep aids or other drugs to help them concentrate and/or do more work, would they be penalized for the performance-enhancing qualities – like in consideration for a grant or Nobel Prize or degree? (my paraphrase, I can’t find the link)  Check out Brant’s story too, along with the comment thread.  It’s really insightful.

Along similar lines, does anyone know how a one-time blood draw can be realistically used to diagnose a potential problem with a dynamic body system?  If it’s a known fact that a particular chemical in your body fluctuates over the course of the day, then how does a snapshot from one time of day indicate the presence, or absence, of a problem?  For example, melatonin levels are a function of ambient light-levels, cortisol (a stress hormone) levels increase at during sleep and are depleted while awake.  This is true for a number of chemicals, amino acids and proteins in the body.  If I took a snapshot of shared memory in the simulator and presented it as final word that “nothing is wrong” I’d get laughed out of engineering.  It’s like concepts of stimulus/response and change over time are not even considered.  OK…vent complete.

Watched Hell’s Kitchen last night because nothing else was on.  That’s a sad hour of my life I’m never getting back.  I thought the excerpts shown on The Soup were atypical.  I was wrong.  There were more bleeps in that one episode than a Dog the Bounty Hunter weekend marathon.

Aside: Robert, I'm still trying to distill down one take-away point from unChristian.  One of the adjectives in my tagline is wordy.