Back to School -- Again.

School has already started for the little kiddies. But, only now have the implications dawned on me that my wife has decided to go back to school, too.

Among her first assignments, she has to write a short essay on the challenges of the adult college student.

I helped her proof the essay. While helping her, all the challenges she mentions have now become apparent in our personal lives:

Hefty student loans.

She's nervous as hell and constantly doubting herself.

No personal time for herself.

No time with family (meaning, me and the kids).

That last one translates into me having to handle the kids a whole lot more on my own. Cooking and cleaning is something I always try to help with, but now I will practically become a single dad for a few months while my wife studies for school.

The kids hate it when I cook. Hardly have I seen my kids scowl so hard. Especially my son.

Despite all of this, my wife's endeavors are completely worthwhile if she sees them through to completion. She's got what it takes.

Now, if she would only recognize that herself and embrace that, she'd realize that everything will be fine on her first day back to school.

Even if I do have to find something to cook tonight.

On Being Free

Today, I learned about an organization called Free the Slaves by viewing a TED talk by Kevin Bales. I had no idea that modern slavery was so prevalent. I certainly believed slavery still existed-- but not in the way that Bales described.

I then read an article where an author defended the French outlawing the burqa.

I then reflected upon my freedoms, other people's slavery, and whether the French really ought to outlaw the burqa.

I am moved by the efforts of Free the Slaves. My money is hella tight. But I think I'll budget a small, but continual donation to this organization. One day, my wife and I may even volunteer some time with this organization after we've cleaned up some financial issues in our lives.

And for slavery-- that seems to be what it all comes down to. Money. Slavery is driven by the allure of cheap labor. Modern slaves, according to Bales, usually walk into the trap of slavery because they are financially destitute. A suspicious character comes into the village offering jobs to everyone. Villagers get on the truck out of desperation only to never be allowed to go back home. After they realize they aren't getting paid and don't want to risk their lives in a rock quarry for free, they villagers try to leave. Unfortunately, they only discover that they are both too far away from home and brute force greets them at the gate as they try to leave.

That's when it hits them . . . they are now slaves.

But Bales also mentioned that a process is necessary for emancipation. True emancipation isn't accomplished by simply setting a slave free. A former slave must also be given a solid education and opportunity to earn his or her own living.

The United States could have benefited so much from this concept had they realized that during the 1800's.

So then, freedom isn't just escaping an oppressor. Freedom must be supported with education, finances, and a will to remain emancipated.

Perhaps freedom must even earned, in a sense.

Don't get me wrong. Well all deserve freedom up front. But because the world has so many oppressive people living in it, freedom isn't always the default option given to all people. That's why I say it must be earned. Perhaps, enforced is a better word.

But freedom must be enforced by those who want it as much as by those who lend a hand to help provide justice.

That how Free the Slaves actually does free the slaves; they realized that emancipation required that the slaves be active participants in their own freedom. They must want to be free and they must be solidly supported while they embrace independence.

And from what I can tell, the emancipated usually do.

But there are times when the object of emancipation does not want freedom for whatever reason. Many African-American slaves did not know anything other than slavery after slavery was abolished in the United States. And in a sense, returned back to slavery-like conditions in many cases. Not out of love for it; Just simply because they were dumped into society as second class citizens. There was hardly any leverage to become independent. So, slavery in a sense still continued for a time with African-Americans.

Now, I will turn my attention to France. Outlawing the burka is an attempt to enforce emancipation on people who may not want to be "free" in this sense. Of course, not all women want to wear a burka that wear them. But at least some do. Can you tell them not to?

I agree with the goal of setting people free from oppression-- even if that slavery is in the form of religious oppression. But freeing people that don't realize they want this emancipation may be of little use.

I think first, they have to want the be free. And those that already do want to be free, need a shelter or hiding place. They need support for their stance for freedom. Otherwise, they will be greeted with brute force for their "disobedience".

Set up shelters for women who are religiously oppresses to escape and start their own lives anew might be a good idea. And for those who still want to wear a burka-- expose them to the opposing view point. Educate them. Whet their appetite for freedom from the burka. Outlawing the burka may only make opponents cling to it more. Besides-- if they want to wear it yet it's outlawed . . . isn't that oppression, too?

They won't want to be free from it if they feel empowered by it. And they won't want to be free from it if defying that law becomes a badge of honor.

That's my two cents, anyhow. Now see how far two cents gets you these days.

I do think I can afford to give more than two cents as a donation to Free the Slaves, however.

Under the Weather

I've been battling my own personal sever cold, upset stomach, a vomiting kindergartner, a sullen fourth grader, and my wife's depression.

I just don't feel so good lately.

I've been keeping up with other blogs a lot and writing more stuff on my other one rather than here, lately. I took a partial sick day. And even with that, I still feels like shit.

This half of my life has sort of run out of steam lately.

Man, I can't wait for the weekend.

Hell, I can't wait to finally come out from up under the weather!

Whatever the hell that means.

Late Night Maintenance

When you work with servers, you'll have those day . . . er . . . I mean, nights, where you'll have to work into the wee hours of the morning.

On one hand, I enjoy it. I'm a night owl by nature. I love staying up until 4:00 AM -- just so long as you let me sleep in until noon.

No matter how sleepy I feel, I seem to get a high around 4:00 AM or so. I'm not sure why. I just like the night air, I guess.

But, I cannot go to bed at 9:00 PM and wake up at 4:00 AM a happy person.

I don't know why, exactly.

Nor can I stay up until 4:00 AM and wake up at 6:00 AM refreshed.

Nah, I'll wake up more like pissed.

So, I'm having one of those moments where I'm waiting on some data to copy over from one server to another at 4:32 AM. I've been up since 7:00 AM yesterday and I plan to catch up on some sleep once I'm done with this maintenance job. I have to do this at a bizarre time so that customers won't be impacted too much during the day.

I wish I could keep this sort of schedule all the time, but alas, I appear to be stuck in the 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM world-- the world of the dreaded "morning people".

Uptight

Seems like everyone around me is really up tight and wound up.

My son gets very, very angry if I beat him in a game of chess. But then, he gets upset if he gets the sense that I let him win or went easy on him.

My daughter wants me to let her play chess, but she really just likes to randomly move pieces around. That nice. I think that's cool that she has a great interest in chess for her age-- except when I'm trying to play a real game against her brother.

And my dear wife . . . she worries about many things herself.

Everyone is complaining to me or whining about something. I just take it all in.

*Sigh*

If it wasn't so late already, I think I'd have myself a beer and go to bed. I think I'll skip the beer and just head on to bed since I've got work.

I wonder why everyone around me stays so uptight.

Gettin' It Together

Sometimes I feel like I'm sinking in quicksand when I try to keep up with everything in my life. Work gets hectic sometimes; my projects seem like one continuous steam of never-ending tasks that can never get done.

My wife and kids are a bit needy of my attention. I love 'em and they deserve all I've got. But, they sure do take all I've got without much hesitation!

I do get back in return, though.

Anyhow . . .

Lately, I've come across a few applications that have really helped me out quite a bit.

GNUCash

Money management to the rescue! This program helps me keep up with our family's spending. I've been poor with my money management lately. Now that I don't have daycare costs any longer, it's time to do some financial healing with that extra cash.

GNUCash is a free, opensource program that comes with Linux, but also can run on Windows and Mac.

It's a little tricky to use at first. I think sometimes powerful programs give you so many choices that you really don't know where to start. Read though the help files. Understanding how this program ticks is well worth the effort--especially if you're serious about taking those first steps towards a better financial life.

GoogleCalendar

I've gotten so busy that I need to start putting important dates on a calendar. GoogleCalendar works great for me. It's free and handy to use. GoogleCalendar will also give SMS, e-mail, and pop-up reminders for all your calendar dates and appointments.

And I just like Google stuff in general. So pretty and colorful. Oooohhhh . . .

Producteev

Sometimes, having a smart calendar just isn't enough. You day sucks when your boss asks you if you made "those changes yet" and you clearly forgot. But the e-mail is clearly in your inbox.

Enter, Producteev.

You can forward important e-mails to your Producteev account to build a task list so that your important reminders (be they personal or work related) won't get burried in your inbox.

You can use your smart phone to also manage Producteev.

And Producteev can sync with GoogleCalendar-- thus, marking dates on your calendar without you ever having to stop and log into your Google account separably.

Producteev has both free and pay levels of service.

Since I've started using GNUCash, GoogleCalendar, and Producteev, I finally see light at the end of the tunnel concerning my finances, my hectic schedule, and the constant onslaught of projects at work.

Now, if I could only come up with a popular application of my own that generated a huge user base. Then someone like Google could come along and buy me out and send me on a permanent vacation.

Then, I could forget about all those utilities that I just mentioned.

Emotions Pt. 2 -- Trigger Happy

I've also learned from reading Ekman's book Emotions Revealed that the events of your past can determine how easily various emotions are triggered within a person.

Such a notion may sound like a no-brainer, but the implications can be quite powerful.

Consider this idea: when a person's emotional triggers have become sensitive due to exposure to certain situations or traumas, anything remotely similar to those events can cause very strong emotions.

For instance, a person who was bullied constantly may hold constant restrained anger at those who impose themselves. When an adult, that same person can become just as angry at some being mildly pushy or bossy. This anger often comes across as an overreaction to others. Whereas the person who has become emotional feels justified.

Here's perhaps the most important information found in Ekman's book.

An abused person will have very sensitive emotions for anything that brings back memories related to abuse. So, if the abused still harbors fear, anger, or guilt, those emotions will surface very quickly and strongly.

Learning this, I have found it easier to diffuse tense situations with people that I see from day to day. Now, I don't look at my wife as a hysterical, overreacting female pumping too much estrogen. Now, I see that she simply has a very sensitive trigger over certain issues because of events from her past. She is overreacting. But not because she's unreasonable or has too much estrogen. She's overreacting because she was injured by some similar event.

Same thing happens with me. I have my sensitive triggers, too. Perhaps not as many since I've had a happier childhood than my wife.

Be that as it may . . . now it's time that we take this knowledge and use it for our advantage.

Learn where your sensitive triggers are. Count to ten or 20 before you speak if you've noticed that you're getting emotional. Especially if the emotion is anger. Anger can be justified and is many times quite necessary. But unchecked anger can cause another sour feeling-- regret.

Learn your loved ones' sensitive triggers-- but, not to exploit them. Rather, learn this so that you'll know when to back down and give them a minute to vent. You'll know that it's a moment when you shouldn't take their emotions too personal if you know a sensitive trigger has been set off. Still take them seriously, but don't take things so personal. An emotion usually fades from a few seconds to a few minutes in most cases, unless you or someone else adds fuel to the flame.

Learning the expressions on people's faces is very helpful, but again, isn't the ultimate goal of the book. This book will not turn you into some covert FBI agent so that you can tell when people are lying by the way they dart their eyes.

But it can help you better understand what people are going through. And this understanding can help you know when to console, encourage, or get ready to move out the fucking way!

Emotions

I'm reading a book called Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman. I'm finding it to be a very interesting book. His research focuses on how facial expressions are tied to our emotions and that these expressions are universal for (but not necessarily limited to) the emotions of amusement, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, and contempt.

But, he also delves into how we can better understand emotions as they rise up in us. He also gives tips in how to deal with the emotions of others as we better learn how to read them on other people's faces.

Emotions are bound very much to our motivations and needs, or to those objects perceived as obstacles standing between us and our needs and desires.

Anger is an emotion that signals something is standing between us and our goals-- and we want to move it out of the way before it thwarts us. Sometimes with violence, if we're bothered enough.

Sadness is an emotion that tells others we need help. We've lost something or someone dear to us. We may feel helpless or our anger has turned into some sort of resignation. We may be going though or have recently experienced trauma of some sort emotionally. Perhaps the trauma was a long time ago, but remains unresolved.

Contempt is most interesting to me. I used to simply think of contempt as hate. But that's not quite right, according to Ekman's research. Contempt is a feeling of superiority as one looks down on another. Contempt is someone taking pleasure in knowing that he or she is better than someone else, and therefore, it's reasonable to mistreat the object of contempt. It has been reported that terrorists often have this look of contempt before they carry out their plans. Surveillance videos and interrogation reports under the lens of Ekman's research has brought this phenomena to light.

I worry about this emotion. I will be sure to look for it more often upon other people's faces.

And, I will try to pay more attention to see if I ever feel the muscles in my face form a look of contempt. Once you learn how to better identify facial expressions, you can identify them a bit better on yourself as well.

Back to School

Time for the little kiddies to start going back to school.

Time to become a slave to the daily grind.

Around here, traffic amplifies and you have to get up much, much earlier to get anywhere on time when school starts. The daily schedule simply becomes far more complicated when school starts.

Sigh.

My little girl starts kindergarten this year. She'll be riding the bus with big brother. That's a cute sentiment, but I wish I could enjoy it without knowing it time to start the drudgery all over again.

I should have went to bed an hour and a half ago.

Between Two Worlds

As I sit here, my wife's grandmother is slowly passing away. She's "stable" but her death seems imminent. She's been to the emergency room about five times this week. The last two times were in the same 24 hour period. She keeps losing consciousness. She's over 90 years old, bedridden, and blind. She loses oxygen and passes out upon any level of exertion-- like say, during a bowel movement attempt. The family keeps reviving her regardless of how tired she looks.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have a young niece who is about to bring life into this world any day now. Her parents are cruel people who never deserved children. Funny . . . those are the kinds of parents who keep having as many children as they can.

So, we have a young woman who isn't ready to be a mother in any sense. She lives with her parents who constantly threaten to kick her out of the house. She has no job (Duh! She's about to drop a baby any moment now!), no money, and no idea what life with a new child will bring.

My wife and I sit here between these two worlds, wondering what we can do to help.

But we only find ourselves watching helplessly as we hope for the best while bracing for the worst.

More St. Vincent

Here's one more Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) video:

And here's another rendition of the same cover, Dig a Pony:

And finally, here's my favorite song by St. Vincent. It's not a video, exactly. Just an upload of The Apocalypse Song:

Enjoy!

Raised from the Dead!

Woo-hoo! I thought my Creative Zen Vision M player was dead, but it's not! It's back to life!!

I let my wife borrow it during her gym workouts.

Well, I fished it out of her purse to listen to some of my favorite tunes one evening.

My heart sank as it struggled to boot up. The splash screen appeared, but then was replaced by snow!

I tried to hide my hurt, because I knew my wife was probably feeling really, really guilty when she saw that it wouldn't boot up.

My son immediately asked to have it. He loves to take things apart. He couldn't wait to take a hammer to it and have it strewn across the house in bits and pieces.

But, I couldn't let go. I just couldn't.

I morned for about a week.

But then, I became desperate. I started reading online about the symptoms my player was having. I started reading up on how to (properly) take one apart and where I can order replacement parts.

I made plans to order a new hard drive and perhaps a new battery if the pricing made sense.

But before ordering anything, I made one last ditch effort and decided to just let it charge. Maybe the battery was just so low that it was behaving in a bizarre fashion. I plugged in the charger, hit the reset button with a paper clip, and watched it boot to the recovery mode.

There, I just let it sit and soak in the power.

And Lo! After charging for several hours, my Creative Zen player was filled once again with the breath of life!

My wife promises to never touch my player again. I don't believe her, though. And I don't mind if she sees it again. I think her only crime was simply not charging it now and then. Yeah, she borrowed it for that long.

But my son is very disappointed. He though he had a new toy to break.

Boy, am I glad I didn't let him have his way with my MP3 player! I would have been sick if I had found out later that it still have a fighting chance! Just sick!