Profunksticated

Hello, you all. Sorry it’s been a few weeks. Some random thoughts from old Profunksticated, the Supergroovalistic One:

It takes suffering through a nasty upper respiratory infection to realize that a person should never, ever take for granted the ability to swallow food or liquids without intense throat pain.

The 2008 and 2009 Philadelphia Phillies are the best baseball teams this historically hapless franchise has ever fielded.

This commute between the DMV and the Philly-South Jersey may be coming to an end as I seek employment in New Jersey. It cannot come too soon. Just one recent morning, I found myself stuck in traffic along southbound Interstate 95 for an hour north of Baltimore due to a multi-vehicle accident that involved an auto transporter. And to top things off, the computer that controls the traffic signals in Montgomery County, Maryland crashed. Someone’s gonna have to re-write that code or consult a library.

I do like having these long weekends under FMLA. I don’t like not getting paid for when I’m not at work. Why does life have to have tradeoffs? I want it all.

I finished a master’s course called Software Frameworks, all about reusing code in web-based applications. It kicked my azz. A major problem was the software packages we were required to download and work with were flawed. After getting a string of “A’s,” I escaped this Dante’s Inferno of a course with a “C.”

I voted for a third-party candidate in the New Jersey election for governor. I was proud of myself for helping this guy get 5% of the vote. President Obama notwithstanding, I’m about sick and tired watching the donkeys and the elephants practice their shenanigans. The electorate needs to get bolder and support more of these folks, who aren’t backed by big money and who aren’t bought (at least not yet).

Thank God for my son’s Playstation 3. He told me it plays Blu-Ray discs. Until then, I was contemplating getting a Blu-Ray player to go along with the newly-bought 42-inch LCD high-definition television. I love watching that thing.

Profunksticated is taking time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act to care for the Spouse, whose MS is starting to kick up to a new level. She had a flareup a couple of weeks ago that landed her in the ER, where she spent 10 hours. The steriod infusion she was given has been of limited effectiveness. Her neurologist is putting her on interferon, the same drug she had when she was first diagnosed in 2003.

She having a little more trouble walking and she complains of stiffness. The fatigue is still there.

I will be spending Mondays and Tuesdays in NJ and the rest of the week in the DMV. Of the days I’m home, Monday will be he FMLA day and Tuesday I will work remotely.

God is still good.

Wassup? I’m back, for now.

Am I crazy, or did Profunksticated really get more than 10,000 hits while he was away?

Profunksticated (the blog) earned a whopping 45 cents via Google Adsense, but that was back in April.

I’m still commuting between the DMV and the Philly-South NJ. It’s getting old.

I’ve learned in my first year on the job I need to improve my attention to detail, a recurring theme throughout my one-year performance review.

I’ve fallen off the wagon and gained 10 pounds in the last month or so. I’ve got to hit the workout room once again and lay off the Dairy Queen blizzards with Oreo cookies and Heath Bar chunks.

I’m three courses into my master’s program in information systems management. That class in object-oriented programming (Java) kicked my azz. I had to get help from a Java developer in my company. I got an “A.”

In July, my brother married the chick-on-the-side co-worker with whom he had a son. You may recall the kid was born less than three months before his wife died, which was 18 months ago. The new wife had moved into his house a couple months befor they got married, much to my nephews’ chagrin. This week, my older nephew moved out following a huge blowup between he and his father. Guess where he’s laying his head? That’s right, our house. There are more extremely gory details, but I’m only hearing one side of the story, which is my nephew’s.

My sister and my dad attended the wedding. Sis found it hard to watch; Dad was sort of neutral. My mother didn’t show; she conveniently was out of town. The new wife’s family was overjoyed, acting as if there was nothing wrong with the adulterous relationship she was part of. I guess the bottom line is that I cannot control what two adults do, but when it impacts the kids, then I have to be concerned.

Just wanted to let ya’ll know that the recount in the Spouse’s bid for school board in our NJ town was held this morning and it confirmed that she lost by seven votes. She’s still glad she did it and hope it inspires folk to take a closer look at the school district that once employed her.

All I can say is that I hope this project raises her profile enough to where her husband will one day no longer have to work.

Hello, all,

With Mother’s Day approaching, I thought I’d share with you this poem by a friend of mine from my recovery fellowship. Give her some support though the site. Thanks.

Random stuff:

The Spouse plans to petition for a recount in the recent school board election in our NJ township. Now that the absentee ballots have been counted, she is behind the third-place candidate (who is the only incumbent running this year) by only five votes of more than 3,400 cast. She plans to show election officials a pattern of impropriety, including the incumbent refusing to leave a polling place when told to leave by election officials and a poll worker at one site almost getting into my wife’s face because she was slightly within the 100-foot distance from the doors.

I’ve spoken to my landlady, who also is a teacher, about the results. She recalled that she helped a fellow teacher with a Virginia school board campaign some years back. Of course the teacher played up her educational credentials, just like my wife. But that woman lost. My landlady’s blunt assessment is that “no one gives a damn” about educational credentials when it comes to school board politics. She suggested that if my wife runs again next year, she hold her nose and try to align herself with the local political establishment.

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I saw the movie Obsessed with some friends at an early Sunday morning showing in Virginia. I sat with my arms across my chest for about the second half of the flick with a scowl. Why?

I really wasn’t feeling Idris Elba’s character Derek being put out of the house by Beyonce’s Sharon because he DID NOT MENTION that some crazy woman on the job was trying hard to come on to him. And Derek, unlike a lot of men and to his credit, didn’t bite. If I’m Idris/Derek, I’d have morphed into Stringer Bell and had the bee-yotch whacked.

Sorry, if that’s me, I’m gonna be real pissed if my wife tries to put me out behind a failure to say something. I’m not moving. She may have a right to be upset. However, not saying something, as a marital offense, doesn’t rise to the level of being asked to leave the home. And many men will tell you that the reason they won’t say anything is because they fear receiving precisely the same irrational reaction Sharon exhibited.

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I just wrapped up my first course in the IT master’s program, which was Managing the IT-Enabled Enterprise. Now it’s on to Business Architecture and Process. One thing disturbed me. We were assigned to review and comment on each others’ final group papers, describing a restaurant’s IT environment and action plan.

I found two of the papers appalling in that they were filled with misspellings, bad grammar and busted syntax. And this is supposed to be graduate-level work? I wanted badly to say something, but all the comments are open on a thread for everyone to see, and I didn’t want to embarrass anyone. I initially chalked the bad writing up to students for whom English is not their first language. I see that here at work all the time and have to clean up that writing. I checked the authors’ names on one particularly bad paper, but those names indicated to me they were born right here in the United States. I’m thinking I may speak with my academic advisor about that.

Fortunately, my group’s paper was relatively clean, thanks to yours truly.

What do you guys think about a 28-year-old woman who won’t let her 52-year-old mother stay a house she shares with her husband for a week while the mom is in between addresses, waiting for a place to open up? “We just bought this house and we need our privacy,” is her rationale.

Seems the daughter’s been mad at Mom since Mom left an emotionally abusive marriage. Her ex-husband, the daughter’s dad, is a minister with a long history of adultery to the point where the woman could no longer stay in the marriage. And the man told her she couldn’t take the two daughters.

I know there are two sides to every story, but what’s up with the younger daughter? Her mom says she did everything for her kids, but yet gets this kind of treatment. What say ya’ll?

More stuff:

I’m scheduled for Jury Duty in Camden, New Jersey on Tuesday. The courts in NJ are giving me another chance to show up. I was scheduled to report on the same day in February, but I tried to get out of it by telling them I work out of state and to travel to NJ would be a financial hardship. (OK, not that much of a hardship, but you know….) I had forgotten about the summons for a few weeks, so I made the request to be excused in early February.

No dice, they responded, all but saying, “Show your butt here on Feb. 24.” Well I didn’t get the response until a day or two before and I was here in the DMV. I didn’t show.

The courts, in their wisdom, then told me to show up March 24. They added that if I didn’t report on the new date, I’d have to stand before a judge and tell them why I didn’t show up twice.

The last time I reported was in 2002. I was in a jury pool for two cases – on a drug case, a couple of guy charged with selling crack near a school; the other was a civil case where the family of a man who died in an apartment fire was suing the apartment owners for negligence. I wasn’t picked for either.

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I have a question: Is it good form to re-pop the unpopped kernels in a microwave popcorn bag? I don’t know about you, but I hate seeing those wasted kernels at the bottom of every bag and seeing them go to waste.

Call me weird, but I feel like those poor corn kernels missed their callings simply because the heat didn’t make them pop, but I never do. I should start trying to re-pop those kernels.

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And to top things, off, The Spouse is running for a seat on the school board in our NJ town. The election is April 21. The term is three years. She’s one of four candidates vying for three open seats. How it works is that one-third of the nine-member board is elected each year.

She’s told she may be the first former teacher ever to serve on the board. My beloved will be following in a proud family tradition. You see, my mother served on the same board for 15 years. Mom was first elected in the spring of 1977, my senior year of high school, too late to do me any good. Had she run a year earlier, I could have used some major leverage up in that spot.

As you may know, The Spouse was forced to retire from a classroom teaching position in the local high school due to a permanent back injury inflicted on her by a student. So she’s trying to go about her mission in another way. I ask that you pray for her successful candidacy.

Sorry it’s been so long. I really haven’t had a whole lot to say.

Today marks the first anniversary of my SIL’s passing. Meanwhile, my bro, his current squeeze and their year-old son have set up house in the home he had shared with his wife for all those years.

His two sons, it’s safe to say, aren’t thrilled.

He and the woman traveled to Vegas last month. No word as to whether they’ve tied the knot.

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I received two hard copies of the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News, where I worked as a reporter during our Denver years. They’re keepsakes, for sure, along with all the other editions of the newspaper that we kept, including the ones published the days my daughter and older son were born.

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I’m still adjusting to getting up to speed on this on-line course called Managing the IT-Enabled Enterprise. We’re divided into groups, and an assignment is due next Sunday. I’ve taken it upon myself to e-mail my teammates to get them in gear and to come up with a plan. I don’t want to fall behind, which becomes more of a risk now that I’m depending on other people to pull their weight.

Damn, that sounds like real-world work, doesn’t it?

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I’m still working out and trying to eat right. I’ve been hovering around 230 pounds for the past week or so. I’ve broken below 230 a couple times, but my body won’t stay there. My next goal is to break below 220. Then I’ll be a real happy camper.

Hello folks, sorry to have been away. But this month has been an absolute dog in terms of work. We have three different projects all going out the door within a week of each other, all to the same client.

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Friday marked one month since Barack Obama was sworn in as President of these United States. Can you believe all the stuff he has gotten accomplished in that month? First pushing the stimulus package through Congress, and then announcing his plan to help troubled homeowners stave off foreclosure. It’s almost like this guy is too good to be real. Imagine – a President who is actually trying to help the people at home

I’m hoping the Spouse and I can take advantage of this foreclosure avoidance plan. We’ve been in talks with the lender on our NJ home for the past few months, trying to explain how tough it is to keep up when one spouse is living, working and paying rent out of state, in the DMV, and the other is relying on a disability payment that’s only 60 percent of her normal salary. My wife told me she was on the phone with our lender once more, and became so frustrated with the harsh attitude of the guy on the other end that she broke down in tears.

Hearing her talk about this gave me one of those “F— it, let me pack it in and move back home” moments. But then I remembered we need the health insurance that my current gig provides. The person on the other end finally softened and said he would see what he could do to work with us.

We weren’t among those folks with meager incomes buying a $400,000 McMansion. Our house is a modest, early 1950s-era, brick exterior split level with three bedrooms, a decent-sized finished basement and 1.5 baths. We’d really like to keep it.

In a related note, I’ve decided to add Google Adsense to this blog. “Monetizing” the blog, I think they call it. Anyway, if you folks would do old Pro a favor and click on the ads to help a brother out given our situation, he would be eternally grateful. (I hope it’s not bad form to explicitly ask for this, but a brother needs some help.) Thanks much.

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Today, as I write this, marks a year since my now 21-year-old daughter was hit by a car near her school. That case hasn’t yet been resolved. I still praise the Lord she wasn’t seriously injured or killed.

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Here is a really sad story I found in today’s Washington Post. If you’re a Christian, you have to believe the one saving grace is that the young woman who moved to Sierra Leone converted to Christianity shortly before she was killed.

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Pro starts his master’s program in Information Systems next week. I’ve gotten the first textbook and have so far read the first two chapters and an accompanying online “tech guide” that explained the software development life cycle process, which involves a lot of what my employer does. I’m feeling pretty good about this program. The textbook is extremely well-written.

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I was out at a Chinese food joint in Maryland Saturday night. Yes, I broke down and bought fried chicken wings and barbeque spear rib tips. Hey, I’m working out, remember? By the way, I’m close to breaking 230 pounds! Yee-freaking-ha!!!

Anyway, I met a man there wearing a leather jacket and baseball cap with patches commemorating the Buffalo Soldiers. I asked if he had any ancestors who were Buffalo Soldiers and he said none that he knew of, but it was likely there were some in his family. He said he only wanted to pay homage to such African American pioneers, along with the Tuskegee Airmen.

Nothing wrong with seeing so many folks wearing Obama gear, but it was refreshing to see someone wearing gear for the brothers who way back when helped us along our journey to equality in this land called America.