Blogging Ottinger (tim)

Dear friends:

We’ve moved, so you’ll have to write for phone numbers & address. The other house was a rental, this one is ours. We plan to stay here a good long time, and have begun reworking it. We have painted or partly painted most of the ground level, have moved bedrooms into the upper level, and have stashed boxes and bins and baskets anywhere they will fit. It’s a mess right now, and we can’t find all our stuff, but we’re in for the winter at least. We were hauling stuff in +5 degrees F, which was a little chilly for my tastes but it was okay.

John is back at school, after a year of exciting misadventures. He likes being there, and he has the energy and memory to be very good at it. I hope that he is able to balance his life there.

Jason is enjoying the puppy and his online homeschooling, as well as the Nintendo Wii we picked up for Christmas. Between these three, occasionally providing volunteer child care, youth services, and our family stuff he stays pretty busy.

Libby is too busy, what with church offices, babysitting, both our families’ medical emergencies, and a newfound addiction to vampire TV series (True Blood, etc). We are adjusting to the new home and her allergies & bad hip are adjusting slowly too. Some nights are better than others, but we’re glad to be here and glad to be together.

Some of the big news is about my father. Some of you following the blog know that he had a really massive stroke/strokes in November. Basically, the carotid artery split lengthwise from about his jawline to a point well into his brain. He’s pretty much lost anything on the left side of his body. He was in bad shape, and for a while we didn’t really expect him to pull through. We were visiting and helping with Mom for about 10 days in November, until we came back up for our move. With the crazy winter weather, we didn’t know if we’d be able to get back down to see them until spring. Weather held out, and we have just completed a weekend visit. We got to see him communicating by gesture and sometimes by writing (writing is poor, but improving). He has a sense of humor and could laugh and pick on us with physical humor, but could not talk to us. We can’t really assess how much of him survived the stroke, but he has some very clear memories and the ability to process spoken language and some right-side muscle control. Eventually he may be able to eat and drink again. He is off the trach and breathes on his own, but still eats through a tube in his stomach. This week we received word that he has begun using words. It’s a good step and more good will come from it. They are a good six hours’ drive for us in good conditions so we can’t get down very often, but we keep in touch via facebook and phones & such.

Libby’s sister had the same kind of carotid artery blockage as my dad and just had it cleaned up this week so it won’t progress into the same kind of stroke (a mighty good idea). Libby’s mom continues in discomfort and weakness over her knee and hip replacements. Libby’s dad (Jim) has Alzheimer’s which is continuing to worsen and affect his behavior, but he’s still happy to see us and able to conduct conversation after a fashion. They have been a long-term prayer project, and will continue to be for some time. It’s a tough spot, but they do the best they can.

My sisters are taking care of Mom and Dad. It could easily be a full-time job, except that they have all the full-time work they can handle. It’s a bit of a struggle. Mom is fairly helpless, but will have to learn to cope on her own more. Between obesity and blindness and post-cancer medications she stays a bit of a mess. She is used to Dad taking care of everything for her, so this is bewildering and upsetting to her. She doesn’t process things very well mentally or emotionally. Of course she can’t drive, so she must be ferried everywhere, and her mobility problems mean she can’t take the bus. It’s a tough time for her and she transmits the toughness to her primary caregivers, so prayer for them, Mom, and Dad is always appreciated.

My job is excellent still, and I’m picking up skill and product knowledge as fast as I can. I have many things I want to learn this year, and have been neck-deep in legacy code so it’s been a good time. I even will be welcoming one of my friends to the team in a few weeks. I’m happy to be employed, of course, but even happier to be working with the Geolearning team. I am so proud of the work they’ve been doing over the past few months and how much they have simplified the code while increasing test coverage. While everything is not perfect, it is continually being perfected.

On the note of imperfect reaching for perfection, my church is doing pretty well. We’re not large, and we’re not rich, but we really have something good going on at Mundelein. There are great kids, wonderful grannies, and sweet people of all ages in between. We’re not everybody’s cup of sunshine, but we’re happy to be there and happy to contribute in time and effort and material.

That’s our lives this January in a nutshell. It’s been a very busy time with the move, Christmas, and various medical events, but now it is time to get into the groove of more frequent blogs (here, Agile Otter, and Agile: In a Flash. I have programming languages and music skills to learn, and a great man cave to do it in.

Peace to you all!

This is twenty-ten and I’m nearly able to get back to my normal web presence. There is so much going on and tech has improved my enjoyment of life yet again. Here are some things I’m loving in the new year:

• My new office in my new house is great. I have my computers on either side of the room, a nice closet at one end, and a window to the front porch on the other. It is the most masculine room in the house, and probably the most peaceful in its way. I have the computer on the other side of the room playing jazz & rock tunes quietly 24/7. It’s nice.
• My return to home ownership is a good thing. It’s fiscally responsible and pleasant. We have partially painted the downstairs, and were on our way to tastefully decorating and arranging until our lease on the other place loomed large and now we’re piled with boxes and bins. Still, nice. It’s a cape cod with a partially finished basement. Seems like a decent neighborhood, and a good hot dog joint two blocks away.
• The google phone and I are still in love. I enjoy my G1 (too much re: Libby) and have it set up for all my email accounts (work and personal), weather, local news, local search, google reader, facebook, and general web browsing. It is also my alarm clock and a primary twitter tweeter.
• The Asus Eee PC is still my main computer. I am loving it, and haven’t seen to many warts at all. I can’t turn off the touchpad, and the keyboard and screen are small, but I can plug into usb kb and any vga monitor and be “all big”. It’s quiet and has good battery life. My son and I call it the Tardis because it seems much bigger on the inside than the outside. I miss the spacious built-in keyboard of Lappy but this will do nicely, It even supports me doing programming. It is my best skype machine also, so it’s taken over the video and audio sharing chores during my daily remote pairing sessions.
• Comcast gives me the best internet service of all. My wife sneakily upgraded the web access without telling me, and it’s totally rocking. Reliable and fnew
• My driveway is much easier to shovel clean now.
• I’m starting to play through some tab now and then to learn catchy bits of songs I like. That is showing up in my sunday playing as some new aptitude to building rhythm guitar riffs. I’m also loving my effects, including the HardWire delay pedal I got last year. With the vibe pedal pushed a little later in the chain, I’m loving the sound my Breadwinner solid body electric guitar makes. I’ve played it all month.
• My dad’s dogged determination to come back from his stroke.
• My growing respect for my sisters and the way they’ve stepped up to take care of Mom and Dad in Indy. And their hubbies & such too.
• When the puggle is behaving, he’s a pleasant puppy. He’s smart, and that’s not always easy to deal with, but I have a grudging admiration for him that survives my homocidal rages when he tries to eat a blanket or pillow (or revise the potty rules).
• The excellent collection of chili peppers my wife and friends have built up for me. I’m never without something tasty to eat, even when it’s simple dishes tricked out with one kind of pepper or another.
• My job is great. I get to play with a lot of fun tech (sql, linq, etc) while doing valuable work with excellent coworkers. Sure, I wrestle with stinky legacy code, but this is a year we’ve begun to get rid of a lot of the ugliness that used to hinder us. There is more work to do in features and scalability enhancements, but we’re always moving into a better position from which sweeping changes can be made. The code base improves month over month, as the unit test count rises. It’s good.
• Of course, my wife. I like her better all the time, and it’s been 21 years so far
• That my oldest son is getting his chance to learn hard lessons on his own, instead of through lecture. I’m hoping he really connects this year and catches fire as a student. He might become a really good worker.
• My youngest son’s unabashed geekery and quick wit.
• The new bedroom. Oh, it’s tiny and we miss our private bath, but I like the room, the ceiling fan that keeps us cool at night, the queen bed that replaced our oversized king, and the dvr so that my old movies don’t get wiped out to make room for animated superhero cartoons. Not that there’s anything wrong with anitmated superhero cartoons.
• The “you asked for it” sermon series at our church, where all topics were nominated by the members and attenders. It’s been very good, and not just because I have such a strong agreement with the information as-given. It’s been really good.
• The switch-ups in the praise team, as we move multitalented people between instruments, vocals, etc. I got to play some harmonica, some acoustic, some bass, and of course the standard electric stuff. Each time we rotate, we get a slightly different feel. That is really cool.
• Continued collaborations with Jeff Langr, my partner at Agile:InAFlash.
• So many good things to learn, so many good people to meet, so many ways to help, so many good things to teach, so many good things to eat.

I only have a G1, not the cool new Droids, but I have become far too comfortable with it. It really is an amazing bit of technology with some useful bits of programming. My favorite apps right now?

• Weatherbug gives me constant awareness of the weather. Nice stuff, multi-location, too.
• Twidroid is always running. Next to tweetdeck it is my favorite twitter client.
• EMail to access work email from anywhere.
• Gmail for my personal gmail.
• Browser might be the better way to see reader and facebook, because their mobile pages are nicer than most of the apps that would otherwise be used. Nice job Goog & FB.
• WifiOnOff allows me to turn wifi on and off without having to go through the settings menus. It’s mighty handy.
• Waze is a new addition for me. If we all use it then we can track traffic conditions together.
• Metronome because I play guitar and haven’t learned to count or keep a beat all that well.
• FoxyRing adjusts my ringer volume based on ambient noise levels. I have quite missing calls for “didn’t hear it” reasons.
• Bubble is a bubble level. Works in three orientations. Flat it is a circular bubble level. Has actually been handy.

If you can, please drop a line to me as tottinge at gmail com to recommend or disrecommend nursing homes in the Indianapolis/Greenwood area. We have some decisions to make and hearing pro/con a few of them might be useful. If you have definite opinions or good experiences please either email or comment below.

Thank you so much.

wow. I could see doing away with my distortion pedal and just using this. I couldn’t quite give up my custom-made OD, because I like it and have sentimental attachment, but he gets truly great sound from this.

I mixed equal-ish parts Tien Tsin peppers and Ancho peppers, and have been adding it into my hot cocoa. The cocoa mix is Libby’s riff on Alton Browns recipe from Food Network.

I use a coffee stirrer, the ones that are like two skinny straws, and scoop the pepper blend out of a little cup. I put about three “dips” of chilis into a coffee cup of cocoa. It is really very nice.

Cayenne, eat your heart out. This is FAR better.

I just love to listen to Gov’t Mule, and it’s quite nice to hear them jam with Joe Bonamassa. Here is a little video sample.