I have been waiting to write this for the last few days. The high school I attended, Newark Memorial High School, did something amazing this year in athletics. They entered the final week of the football season undefeated.
This is kind of a big thing for the Cougars who have, to best of my knowledge, never made it this far into the season without losing a game. They had two close calls, but prevailed in both of those games to keep their win streak alive. I was very impressed with the team and with my former coach Rich Swift.
Stepping back in time a pinch, I have to say that Coach Swift (just Coach from now on, ok?) played an instrumental part of my development as a young man. With my father having died when I was six and my brother being out of the house when I entered high school, the only real male role model I had to follow was my coach.
He started coaching me when I was a freshman on the wrestling team. His coaching carried through to when I was a member of the junior varsity football and wrestling teams then into when I was a member of the varsity football and wrestling teams.
The football teams I was on for my two years of varsity football were anything but stellar. We went 3-7 my Junior year (and also became the first Newark team to lose a homecoming game) and 2-8 my Senior year. We were pretty awful. Wrestling was a different story as we experienced great success as a wrestling team. But the point of all this is that Newark has always had at least somewhat decent football teams (with the exception of the two years I played and the season a few years ago when Newark didn't win a game). But never had they had a team like this year's team.
So I am so thrilled for Coach and the Cougars this year. Heading into the last week of the year they were 9-0 and facing a James Logan High team that was also 9-0. The game was the match up of the decade in the Mission Valley Athletic League and received extraordinary attention from the media, including a live TV broadcast by the local cable channel. It was truly a battle of the titans of the MVAL.
Unfortunately Newark lost a close one 21-14 to Logan. From the newspaper article it sounded like Newark could have actually won the game, having given up 14 points on turnovers. But needless to say, 9-1 was still good enough for 2nd place in the MVAL and a number 2 seed in the North Coast Section 3A football playoffs.
The seeding meeting for the playoffs went weird to say the least. The Washington High School Huskies somehow managed to get in to the playoffs even though they went 4-5-1. They also managed a number 7 seed, which meant they would face Newark in the first round of the playoffs. Remember those Newark close calls I mentioned above? One of those was a 6-3 win in Fremont against a tough Washingon team. The same team, with one added player, Rashad Vaughn, would be visiting Newark for the first round of the playoffs.
And show up they did, beating Newark 21-7 in the first round. The only Newark score came from their defense, so it was pretty obvious Washington handed Newark their loss pretty emphatically. Which is a shame, because of all the years that I could have thought Newark would be in the NCS final, this was they year.
I am still very happy for the team and for my Coach. But I was saddened to see their season end the way it did. They did so good this year that they should have been in the sectional championship game. But what are you going to do?
Anyway, to Coach Rich Swift and the Newark Memorial High School Cougar football team, congratulations on a great year. I was thrilled every Saturday when I read the paper. My hats off to you guys. You did something that a lot of folks thought could never happen.
Ah, Thanksgiving. What an excellent week. Turkey, stuffing, mashed taters, gravy, more turkey. Ah yes, I can feel the tryptophan induced coma already beginning to settle on me.
This week is going to be a crazy week. I only have three days to get the things done at work that I need to get done. I only have three days to prepare my family for the Thnaksgiving feast awaiting us at the in-laws. I only have three days. But thank God I have three days.
There are so many people in this world that literally have nothing to be thankful for this season. I am not one of those people.
There are people this season that don't have three days to do anything. I am not one of those people.
There are people that are enduring unspeakable distress, tragedy and personal conflict. I am not one of those people.
No, I am not nearly as forgotten about as I like to think I am sometimes. I like to think that I am so pitiful that I have no choice but to garner sympathy from anyone that will listen to me rant. But I am not. I truly have a trove of things to be grateful for. And I am.
This week will be crazy. I am, at the request of my wife, making a concerted effort to get out of work by 5:00 PM every night. In order to do this I will need to be at work by about 7:00 AM to give myself the time I need during the day to get done what needs to be done. That means waking up early to get out of the house early. That also means that I will probably be more tired than usual at night when it is time to tend to the children and the home. It also means I will probably have less time with my wife this week. But you know what?
I am thankful for my job.
I am thankful for my car that gets me to work.
I am thankful for my salary that pays for my gas to get to work.
I am thankful for my ability to wake up every morning.
I am thankful for my ability to wake up early when I need to.
I am thankful for my house.
I am thankful for my children.
I am thankful for my wife.
I am thankful for my family, that I can tend to them and love them.
I am thankful for my bed.
Do you have anything to be thankful for?
Friends make life better. Whether you know it or not, you being someone's friend means that their life has been touched in some way. And if it hasn't, try to make it a point to see that it does.
Case in point: we have some friends in San Carlos that called us up yesterday and asked if they could take our three older daughters for a sleepover. They had no idea that my wife is still sick (getting better, finally, praise God, but still sick). They just wanted to spend some time with our older girls and their daghters.
That was so awesome. It gave my wife and I a chance to have some quiet time without all the hustle and bustle of a gaggle of children at bed time. We were able to relax for an evening, and I am to prepapre to go to work tomorrow resting a little easier knowing that my wife will be a little more OK since she only has two kids to deal with instead of all five.
So I have to say that I am blessed. Friends make my life better and I hope that one day I can be a friend that makes someone else's life a little better as well.
I have had several experiences with web hosts over the years. Some good, some not so good.
Many will remember my issues with iPowerweb. Now I have had the unfortunate experience of yet another waste of space web host.
ImHosted, the former host of the PHP Developer's Network forums, really started to suck the big one. Hard.
About a month ago or so I was appointed administrator of the PHPDN forums. I am honored by that level of trust placed in me from the community and frustrated at the same time. Not by the community, but by the inner workings of our arrangement with our host. ImHosted agreed to provide a dedicated server to our community in exchange for advertising. We both lived up to our respective sides of the bargain until a few months ago. At that time, things started to go a little weird.
Not to get into too much of the gory details, we as a community moderator team decided that it was time to look for a new host. It seemed that daily I was watching as our MySQL database server would literally wipe out any knowledge of the existence of our databases. It seemed like that were times when the web server would just like to turn itself off and on right in the middle of a request. It got so bad that users stopped coming to the site for a spell.
That sucks. Repeated help tickets to the ImHosted support system (see, they don't take phone calls for support anymore, but you can ICQ chat with them, if they choose to answer and stay in the conversation, which they don't) garnered the same generic, canned response: We have fixed your issue and will monitor it to ensure that it does not happen again.
BS with a capital B. They really tried, in my opinion, to lose us as a customer. They did everything they could to make sure that the 33,000 unique visitors we get per month will never use their services. They did everything they could to make sure the 30 some thousand registered users never user their services. Quite literally, they began to suck to the point that I would talk bad about them. And it takes a lot of sucking for me to do that.
Anyway, as I did with iPowerweb, if I can save even one person the hassle of dealing with such a terrible company as ImHosted, I will feel accomplished. Be warned, doing business with ImHosted will make you wish they had never been launched as a company.
In just a little while the PHP Developer's Network forums are going to be turned off and migrated to another server. This is a much needed move since the folks over at ImHosted can't seem to make a server not die and really couldn't care less about customer service
My rant against them will be reserved for another post at another time. The important thing to remember is that for a period of time between about 3:00 PM today and 9:00 PM Sunday, our forums are going to be down for migration to a new, more powerful, more updated web server.
Thanks for supporting the PHP Developer's Network community.
Overheard at our company Thanksgiving lunch today:
Employee (sitting next to the President): "Man, this is great food. And it was free, too. This is awesome."
President: "Free? For you maybe. It cost me $2,000."
Employee: "Maybe you should get a job at one of those companies that gives their workers free lunch then."
Surprisingly this employee was back at work the next day.
Never take for granted the importance of your wife.
I have been through situations before, in my marriage, where I was reminded of just how much my wife means to my household. This little bout she is going through right now is just another reminder.
My wife, as a stay at home, mom has assumed the role of the teacher, caregiver, chef, chauffer and general utility player around the house while I spend the better part of my days at work. That means that when the kids get sick, she is usually the one to take them to the doctor. But today, since my wife is sick, I had to leave work a little early to be able to get home in time to take three of my kids to doctors appointments. Well, three of my kids had appointments. But since my wife is really not able to handle that much at the moment, I ended up with all five kids and a trip to the doctors.
This is not normally an issue except that since I was at work today, and since I was Mr. Mom last night at home, I went to bed later than normal while exhausted and still woke up at my usual 4:45 AM to get to work. So needless to say, I was a little tired this afternoon.
Its all good though. Out three appointments only took about 20 minutes after being at the office for about an hour waiting. Of course, the lab tests and pharmacy time took a little longer.
Not to worry, I was only out of the house from 3:30 to about 6:45. No problem.
It is official. I have a looking deadline heavier than I have ever had.
My company's www web site is going to be launched on January 1, 2007. That means for testing purposes I have to have this site ready for breakage by December 15. That means that I have a month to finish my framework at work, build the front end UI's, build the front end code to render the UI, build the database scema and populate the data with the provided content in time to make sure all hell doesn't break loose when this thing launches
No stress, eh?
Now if I could just figure out how to stop time for about two months I think I should be able to make this deadline...
Today I worked from home so that I could be here to help out with the kids and such. It was a bit of a rough day because I have some pretty intense, looming deadlines coming up at work so I had to work while I was at home.
That means that home didn't get nearly the attention it needed while work didn't nearly the attention it needed. Meanwhile, my wife is still sick, we are still not sure why, and she is still not getting any better. All she can do is lay down and cry. Literally. It is that bad.
Needless to say, me working today didn't make things at home that much better, so I think I am actually going to go into the office tomorrow for a little while and see if I can't get some work done there before leaving early to take care of things at home.
Anyway, for all you would-be husbands out there, if your wife ever gets sick like this, so the smart thing. Take time off of work for a long enough spread to make sure she gets better. I have very little vacation time at work, so my only choice is to work from home. It is nice because I am still working and still getting paid. But it is hard on my wife because I cannot devote the time to her help as much as she needs because I need to devote my time to working.
Oh well, praise God things will improve. Lord knows it can't get that much worse.
So the kids got a small break yesterday. They were going to be staying with some friends of ours while my wife and I were out on our weekend. Since my wife was sick, we didn't end up going. So the kids kind of missed out on a weekend with their friends.
But that was remedied a tad last night as my kids were able to spend a few hours with them anyway. It was good for them and for me. I know I needed rest. I know they needed time with their friends away from the house and away from mom and me. So overall it was a good few hours for all parties involved.
Please keep my wife in prayer. Sandi is very sick and the trips to the doctor that we have taken have resulted in nothing found that could be causing whatever it is she is going through. Any prayers would be much appreciated.
