Larry’s Log

It’s difficult to hear regardless of where its found. I most likely have cancer. That’s the part you hear. Yeah, this is skin cancer and the doctor called it a carcenoma, not a melanoma, and it has been caught early so while it is most likely cancer it is also most likely fairly harmless. We’ll find out for sure in a couple of weeks after the lab tests are back.

Still it’s cancer.

I feel so deeply for those who actually have a serious form of the disease. With me I have skin scraped off my arm where a sore has been for an abnormally long time. For them it’s the prelude to serious surgery, subjecting their body to all sorts of toxic chemicals and being illuminated with radiation. All that on top of hearing, “You have cancer.”

I was let go today.

While I needed the income I can’t say that I’m completely upset about this situation. Oh, I’m a little concerned about paying my bills but I honestly believe that there is something out there that I’m suppose to do and this was God’s way of giving me the opportunity to find it.

I know that now is not a good time to be seeking employment so I’m looking for work mainly, just about anything to bring in an income. I won’t turn down employment but I’ve got to be truthful to myself about prospects and I think I’m more likely to find paying work than finding employment. I think  I may be happier that way also.

I will now start the process of updating my résumé and several webpages (LinkedIn, CareerBuilders, this site and others I operate) and start looking for work. If you need someone who is very experienced with Wonderware, RSView, ControlLogix, PLC5 and SLC50x, OPC servers and clients or building and maintaining websites please give my a yell. My rates are reasonable and I’m currently available.

This weekend was spent with my dogs. This was a wonderful time either walking, playing fetch, rough housing or just lounging on the couch. I guess with my boys both grown I’m using these two dogs to fill in for them. Most of the time was spent with Sammie but Mattie got his share of laptime also. Sammie didn’t always agree with Mattie needing my time also. She told me so in this video.

Boxers can be extremely vocal when they have something to say.

Last night I attended what started out as an informal reunion of the Red Bank High School Class of 1973. It became a fairly formal and very well organized event that was attended by around 70 people. I was amazed by how this thing came together. But I guess I shouldn’t have been. We had some fantastic organizers in our high school.

I saw people I haven’t seen in 35 years and very much surprised that I was recognized by as many people as recognized me. Some of these people I have known since 1960 and was very close to during my childhood and teenage years. Some I barely knew.  It was a joy to see every one  of them.

This got me to thinking, as it was meant to do, just how much changed and how much unchanged we all were. The personalities were all the same but our bodies have aged. So many of us were still recognizable, so few of us weren’t. The real changes weren’t personalities or physical changes but were changes in the eyes.

Last night I truly understood how the eyes are windows into our souls. Even through the joy that appeared in everyone’s eyes on seeing old friends there could be seen the sadness and joys each and every one of us had experienced over the last three and a half decades.

Our experiences were on display there, in our eyes, and I’m sure they would only be visible to people who had known each other as long as we have known each other.

Debbie, thank you so much for being the instigator of this event. Cassandra, I will be eternally grateful to you for organizing everything. Y’all and all the others involved in planning and organizing this event gave me a joy that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Oh, and Debbie, one other thing. Yes, God is good. God is good all of the time and all of the time God is good. God bless you and have safe travels.

Sammie came into my life two years ago. My previous dog of fourteen years had been a Springer Spaniel. I had to put her down in the fall of 2001. Way too many things went wrong in that year. I swore I’d never get attached to another dog again, the pain was just too great.

By the end of 2003 I was spending a good bit of time on the road on business. Gerri talked me into letting her bring a dog into the house to keep her company while I was gone. In January of 2004 she adopted a little two year old Bichon Frisé from our neighbor’s grandmother who had become too old to take proper care of the dog. He won my heart pretty fast.

By late 2006 I was trying to do some hiking to pull myself into some semblance of shape and thought a little larger dog might be the thing to keep me company while hiking. After doing a good bit of research I settled on a Boxer as the breed I was looking for. I mentioned this to Gerri and by early 2007 she found a four year old female Boxer that a co-worker decided he didn’t have enough time to give proper attention. That’s how Sammie became my dog.

Sammie needed to be worked with. She would jump on visitors and generally make herself a pest to guest. She just wanted attention. I’ve been working with her over the past two years and even though she still shows excitement over guests to the house she is at least subdued enough in her enthusiasm that I don’t have to worry about her knocking anyone down.

I think the reason she was so unruly to begin with was from spending way too much of her first four years being boarded. I still travel some but now she has Gerri to take care of her while I’m goine. Before she had strangers. Still, she shows a good bit of anxiety when I am on trips and I think that has contributied to her occassional bouts with clingliness. She can be obbsessive about cuddling. This morning was one of those times.

I’m usually up at 5:30 most week day mornings, often at 5:00. On weekends I really would like to sleep until 7:00. This morning that didn’t happen. Sammie was barking and crying and sounding like her bladder might be full so I got up and took her and Mattie out to relieve themselves. When we came back in Mattie took off to curl up in the bed with Gerri while Sammie acted like she wanted to play. I put on the coffee and began playing with her.

When the coffee finished I was awake so I sat down at my computer and began reading the news. Sammie still wanted my attention. I helped her climb up in my lap and she went to sleep, there in my lap.She has a bed under my desk that she often lays in while I work. I tried to lay her down in that bed but she would have none of it. The only place she was happy was in my lap sleeping.

Now, female Boxers generally run around 55-65 lbs. Sammie is small and often mistaken for a juvenile; she weighs about 45 lbs. Still a 45 lb. dog is too big to be considered a lap dog even as expansive as my lap has become. She was not happy anywhere this morning but my lap from 5:45 until 7:00. Sometimes she just drives me crazy but I still love this dog to death.

Now, the reason I’m writing this is because my friend, Cat, and I were chatting online the other night about things our dogs do. We both agreed we could probably write a book about our dogs antics and we realized that we probably have written a good bit about our dogs online. Now I want your dog stories. How did you become introduced to your dog? Tell me about what your dog does that is amusing or drives you crazy.

And if you are a cat person, I want to hear those stories too.

2 When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” 3 So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Hosea 1: 2&3

The book of Hosea is so interesting to me because of the way it contradicts so much of what detractors of the Old Testament find to complain about my God. According to Levitical law Gomer should have been stoned. God instructs Hosea to forgive her, take her back and love her. That doesn’t sound like the vengeful war god I’ve heard people acuse my God of being.

Taking it in the symbolic context God used through Hosea and Gomer it shows a forgiving God that just requires that one turns from sin and back to God to receive His blessings. Again, this is far from a vengeful god.

I’ve been playing around with Facebook and there’s this thing going around there about writing 25 random things about yourself. The posts in this weblog get automatically posted there so I thought I’d do mine here.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. (I’m not tagging people at the end of this.  If you are reading this consider yourself tagged.) If you are reading this on Facebook, to write a note, look under “Applications” in the menu of your home page (you may have to click “more”), then click Add a Note. In case you didn’t know.” Don’t feel like you need to do this again if you’ve done it already; it’s just a fun way to spend a few minutes.

1. I don’t like macaroni and cheese.
2. I love Little Debbie Nutty Bars.
3. Before my oldest son was born I used a motorcycle for daily transportation.
4. I use to be an umpire.
5. I tore my rotator cuff playing volleyball.
6. I collect pocket knives.
7. I’ve coached 5 and 6 year olds in baseball.
8. I’ve never played golf.
9. I’ve flown a small airplane from Chattanooga to Knoxville to Sparta and back to Chattanooga by myself.
10. I once rode my motorcycle to work in -7°F weather.
11. I enjoy working on my cars.
12. I’ve made one stained glass piece.
13. I like taking Bible study classes.
14. While there are people I dislike I can’t say that I have ever hated anyone.
15. Long winter nights depress me.
16. I prefer the mountains to the beach.
17. I really like grits.
18. I once seriously considered becoming a preacher but decided I wasn’t being called.
19. I fantasize about having a large garage.
20. I’m a pretty good cook.
21. I can’t dance.
22. I do not like beets.
23. I believe a fifteen minute wait for a seat in a restaurant is too long.
24. I surprise myself with what I know sometimes.
25. My wife is my best friend.

That’s my list. Where is your’s?

It should have been easy. Even after spending all day trying to get it done I’ll still say it should have been easy. Two bolts hold it in place and two nuts for the wiring. The only snag is that you really can’t get it past clutch slave cylinder. Okay I took the slave cylinder off and let it hang by its hydraulic line. Well, now I can’t get it turned back around the right way to get it out with the slave cylinder out of the way.

I’m talking about the starter on my truck. The solenoid switch went out on it the other day and I figured I’d save myself a couple of hundred bucks by doing the work myself. I started at 2:00 this afternoon and finished a few minutes past eleven…. and I’m tired. It took me thirty minutes in the shower just to get the grease off of me.

After I finally got it out and put back in I went to hook the battery up and the starter kicked in. I took the starter back out and tested my connections again with a 12VDC power supply I have. It should have worked. I moved the wiring around a bit, rechecked everything and reinstalled it. It went a good bit faster putting it back in this time but I had the same problem. After several removals and reinstallations, trying something different I finally thought it through well enough to know what the problem was.

There is a little ear on the wire terminator that is suppose to lock the wire terminator into the solenoid terminal. I thought I had engaged it but I was wrong. It was shorting out against the starter switch terminal. I fixed that and things seemed good…. until I tried to start it. The clutch actuator wasn’t seated properly. Back under the truck I went to remove and reinstall the clutch slave cylinder, making sure the actuator is seated.

It started after about 2/3 of a revolution.

Okay, just so I have the procedure down, here it is.
Tools needed:

1. 9/16″ socket.
2. 1/2″ socket
3. 3/8″ socket
4. E6 Torx^® socket
5. #2 Phillips screwdriver.

Removal:

1. Remove the negative terminal from the battery.
2. Engage the emergency brake, chock the wheels and jack up the truck.
3. Install jack stands, do not trust the jack.
4. Remove the clutch slave cylinder.
5. Disconnect the wiring from the starter. (Yeah, it’s tight but you can do it and trying to do it after taking loose the starter is much tougher.)
6. Remove the two bolts holding the starter on, twist the starter clockwise and remove from the bell housing.

Replacing starter solenoid:

1. Remove heat shield.
2. Remove grounding strap from solenoid.
3. Remove three Torx^® head screws holding solenoid to the starter.
4. Carefully pull solenoid back and up to disengage from the sprocket throw.

I’m tired I’ll edit this later and finish up. I’m going to bed. I have to drive back to Kansas tomorrow.

When Sammi, Mattie and I went out for our walk this morning it was below 20°F outside but with no wind and the sun was up a little in the sky. In spite of the low number on the themometer It was comfortable outside. I decided then that Sammie and I needed an extended, brisk walk later in the day.

At 2:00OPM we took that walk. The temperature was 39°F and I thought we should be very comfortable. We weren’t. Clouds had moved in and there was no sunshine. On top of that there was a very slight breeze, just enough to add a bit of a chill factor to our walk. The wald was not as extended as I intended it to be but it was brisk.

I’m not one to put clothes on a dog but with a short haired dog like Sammie, she needs something. I found that something at PetSmart. It’s a blue jacket that lays over her back and is attached by velcro on flaps that wrap around her chest and neck. I have been looking for something like this since this past fall but just now found it.

While looking at PetSmart for this jacket I was appalled at some of the clothing they had there for dogs. Surely no dog could be comfortable dressed up in a full coverage snow suit but they had them there. They had knit caps for dogs also. These are silly.

Do I look happy to you?

Dogs don’t need to be humiliated. It’s one thing to dress up a dog for a picture but its something else entirely to put them in people clothes and then parade them around. Way too many of the winter wear I saw today was very close to costume wear. Kind of like dressing a dog up in a bee suit.

Please, if you are a dog owner, think about this before putting clothing on your dog. Some clothing is practical and some dogs need the extra protection fom the elements but most dogs don’t. If your dog has multiple layers of fur it doesn’t need a raincoat or a jacket in the winter. If your dog has a short coat with no undercoat then some sort of protective clothing might be warranted for extended walks outside in weather colder than 40°f but it needs to clothing made for the job, not some altered style of human clothing.

Sammie seemed to like her coat while we were outside but it didn’t take long back in the house before she was trying to rub it off. It’s suppose to rain overnight. Let’s see how she does with it on our walk in the morning. Mattie’s fur is so thick he doesn’t need any thing else.

A couple of weeks ago I found a reference to LinkedIn and I followed it. I had heard about this social networking site but hadn’t taken it very seriously because I’m just not “in” to that kind of stuff… or so I thought. A few minutes of looking at my friends profile and seeing reference to some other people I know had me intrigued with the technology so I grabbed an account and played a little more.

It wasn’t long before I felt comfortable enough with the site to upload my Yahoo! address book and boy was I amazed at the people I knew that were “linked in.” My wife even had an account there. So I sent out invitations to join my network and as those got accepted I found even more people I knew that were using this network. Anyway, it’s a neat site that I can actually find real value in.

However, joining LinkedIn lead me to Twitter and I got a little intrigued with it so I joined there too and started following a hand full of people that I know. It’s neat and it’s fun but I’m not sure of the value yet. I’m also not sure its such a good idea for me to broadcast what I’m doing, including locations, to people I might not know much about. But it is neat and fun.

It is somewhat disconcerting to walk out of one’s office to find the parking lot bathed in flashing blue lights. That’s what found myself faced with this evening as I left work to come home.

There is a company that builds custom vans for people with handicaps in the building across from ours. There was a car carrier parked on our corner and three police cars which I figured had something to do with that until I turned the corner in our lot and saw six other police cars with blue lights flashing in the lower end of our office complex.

There were three more parked in the complex across the street. One man was in handcuffs in our lot.

I quickly tuned my radio to the local News/Talk station, WSB-AM, to hear nothing but Sean Hannity. I can only take so much of him any more. No news about what was going on. Neither was there anything on the local TV news. I plugged the name of the street my office is on into Google Alerts. I guess I’ll find out if anything is published about this between now and the end of the week.

OpenID should be working here now and is required to sign up for an account. The account won’t get you anything right now that you don’t already have but at some point I might require an account to post a comment.

If you currently have an account here and want to play with OpenID log ons just go into your account and add your identity provider to your account. I think LID ought to work also.

Felix, you can set your place up very easily to act as an OpenID server for you. It just takes two plugins.

Well, it’s been a little over a week since my first run. I’ve been fairly faithful with running as scheduled except for one day when I woke up with my legs just hurting too bad to go for a run. I went out again this afternoon.

I’m going to have to do something about this leg pain. I’m sort of worried it might be related to circulation and may just be coincidental to me starting to run. If this doesn’t start feeling better within a week I’ll go see my doctor. I still haven’t picked up a knee brace but I don’t think that’s the problem. My knee isn’t what’s bothering me.

This morning I was going through my daily reads and found this quote over on Flutterby:

“Don’t be sorry. We are all dying Jack. It’s just that some of us are dying a little faster. The key is to not live your life as if you are already dead.”

It was from a weblog about a lawyer trying to simplify his life explaining what it was that made him decide to move up his schedule for quitting his job.

I thought about this for a moment and reflected upon the meaning it held for me then went on about my daily reads.

Cat then proceeded to floor me by writing about the sudden death of a friend and fellow athelete.

All this has me reflecting even more about life than I normally do around Christmas and the new year. It’s something I know but takes stories like these told to me by people I know and love that sends the message home. I’m not promised tomorrow and yesterday is already gone. All I really have is right now.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think about the past and how what I learned then should affect my decisions that I’m making right now. It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t make plans and allowances for my future because, while I’m not promised the future it hasn’t been denied me yet.

No, what that means is that I need to be savoring every moment that I live because it could well be my last. Everything that I write I should write like it will be my last words. Every job I do I should do it as though it will be the last job I’m remembered for. But most of all, I need to cherish my wife, family and friends now as though I’ll not have another day with them.

Living in the now means not anticipating the future. Living in the now means not grieving over past mistakes. I have the now and that’s it. I just need to keep that in mind for each now I may have in the future.

After reading Cat’s post on the Fat Ass 50K I made a commitment to myself to start running. I found the Cool Running.com article The Couch to 5k Plan and decided that building myself up to running three miles a day was doable even in my horrible physical condition. I needed to take care of a few things first, though.

A little over a year and a half ago I had a torn meniscus repaired on my right knee. The job I had at the time made sticking to the physical therapy difficult and the result is that I have very weak supporting muscles for that knee. This has caused me to overwork my left leg resulting in fairly painful plantar fasciitis in my left foot.

During a physical I had a couple of weeks ago I mentioned this to my doctor in relating to him my plans to start running. He gave me his blessings for running but told me I needed a good running shoe with arch support and a knee brace. Okay, that seems reasonable enough. He also upped my blood pressure medication dosage, another incentive to become more active.

I moseyed over to Fleet Feet on the square in Lawrenceville and talked to the people over there. I told the salesman where I was in fitness, what my plans were and what my doctor had told me. I also mentioned to him that I was a tightwad that hated to part with my money. He measured my foot, and then took off after some boxes.

I ended up with a pair of Asics GT-2130s, a pair of Superfeet insoles and a pair of Balega Hidden Comfort XL socks. The shoes are a size 13. I’ve always thought I wore a size 12. The socks are the ankle height socks and they have a little padding over the Achilles tendon. I like this because new shoes tend to irritate that part of my foot.

This morning, after walking both the Bichon Frise and my Boxer I dropped Mattie, the Bichon, off at the house while Sammie, the Boxer, and I took back off to try out the shoes. (I allowed my cash strapped oldest son to give me the shoes for Christmas.) I tried to stay with the Cool Running program but only got through the third set of running/walking before my knee told me to back off. I guess I really do need the brace.

Sammie did great on this outing. I was a little worried about whether she would help me keep up the pace or if she would be a distraction. She recognized what her job was and kept pace right next to me with a loose leash. Even when a woman came outside with a standard poodle and a greyhound she kept her cool and ignored them, staying right by my side.

I finished walking home so Sammie and I put in a little over a mile on the shoes, I just didn’t run as much as I was suppose to. I intend to do the same thing with Sammie tomorrow morning and the next morning and the next. My office is closed until January 2 so I should be able to at least get myself back use to getting up and doing this before I have to worry about being to work.

My goal for now is to be able to run a ¼ mile without stopping. Following the Cool Running plan should have me there in a couple of weeks. I don’t want to look ahead or rush myself on this or set too grand of goals to discourage myself but I do recognize the need for goals. I also know that Cat has shown me that sticking to a program will pay off in huge dividends. The key is sticking to it.