Re: Re: camping  was: bbsing
  By: Nancy Backus to Damon A. Getsman on Tue May 12 2015 13:21:10

 NB> How old is he, again...?  At some point, he ought to be able to learn how
 NB> to take disappointment in stride... but that does take some maturity. :)
 NB> It does, though, help if one wasn't setting one's heart on it... ;)  

  He's 8, going to be turning 9 on the first here.  I'm working with him on the
disappointment bit, but I still try to make sure that I don't set him up for it
by telling him about plans that have any sort of a decent chance of being
pre-empted.  :)  He's really good about it, for the most part, but I like to
save him the added disappointment being as we've been in a situation where he
gets so few things above and beyond the average everyday norm for so long now.

 NB> That sounds a bit of a "good news, bad news" situation...
:)  Good that
 NB> the work is picking up, bad that you didn't have the time available for
 NB> the fun things...

  Well, right now I think that the economic stability kind of takes the
priority in most areas.  I'm going to try to make up for him missing that last
little outing soon here.  The economic situation is starting to look a little
bit better.  Might even be able to have next month's rent paid by the end of
next week.  If that happens there's some definite forward motion [finally]
taking place.

 NB> Sounds quite promising...  paycheck to paycheck is better than no
 NB> paycheck at all... but it certainly is nicer to have a reasonable amount
 NB> coming in regularly...  :)

  It's going up.  Slowly but surely.  For what it's worth the issue right now
isn't _my_ productivity level, either.  It's the fact that the project manager
has a limited amount of time.  I'm usually sitting here wanting to put in more
hours every day, but I'm waiting on his schedule to free up a bit so that I can
get more bits carved off that I can chew easier.  That shouldn't be so much of
a problem in the future, but with the familiarity I have with the stack that
their site is deployed with I really need smaller chunks carved off for me... 
Especially when the people reporting the problems don't even know enough about
the situation to give me enough information to diagnose...  Shouldn't have to
worry about anything like that with a little more experience, at least. 
Totally still a virgin on this 'magento' suite, though.  :)

 NB> So, if I understand correctly, you went with some others in a van to go
 NB> camping...?  A couple of families with kids...?  Was this some sort of
 NB> organized program, or something that people just got together to do...?
 NB> Sounds like a long trip... hard for kids to be cooped up that long...

  It was a long trip, definitely.  It was myself, my roomie, his girlfriend,
and her two kids (along with my son) in a mini-van.  I think that I'm somewhat
spoiled, because my son is so good at dealing with trips like that.  He's
_NEVER_ done anything like that, even when he was 4-5, even on 15+ hour drives.
He just doesn't act that way.  Different strokes for different folks, I've got
to remember...  Not every parent has been able to spend as much time with their
kids as I was able to for the first 6 years with my little man, either.  I've
been lucky in a whole lot of areas.

 NB> Yes, at least he and the other kids had a chance to run and play... and
 NB> sleep outside for the night...  ;)  Too bad it wasn't a little longer in
 NB> the camping phase, for the long trip there and back...  

  They probably reaped a lot more benefit from the whole situation than the
adults did.  They had the entire 18 hours, sans sleeping time, frolicking in
the woods and having a blast.  It was just the van trips that were tough for
them, and I think really only the one.  The kids seem much more able to tune
out the cries of one of their own than the cranky old farts.  ;)  But it was
great to see my son (and the other kids) being able to have such a blast for
such a long stretch of time out there.  Especially after the isolation that my
poor little guy has to endure (as I've whined about endlessly ;).

 NB> Just gotta remember that fictional isn't necessarily reality...  ;)

  butbutbut it seems so REAL in my horribly visual imagination.  ;)

 NB> That still gives at least 50% chance that it WON'T happen...  :)  Maybe
 NB> not even in your lifetime...  ;)

  Well I've always been one of those people with a 'can-do' attitude.  Even
when it comes to the Earth 'can-do'ing an earthquake to try to chuck me off
into space.  ;)

 NB> Sometimes you just have to curb the imagination and not let it run away
 NB> with you... 

  That reminds me I haven't yet meditated today.  ;)  I'm working on it, every
little slice at a time.  I find that it's definitely showing benefits, too. 
Like those nightly revisitation and haunting hours that I've mentioned before. 
When I haven't had way too much coffee or done anything else that spikes my
anxiety uncontrolably, I find I'm having a much easier time banishing such
thoughts.  It just takes me a few minutes to concentrate on releasing those
circular chains of thought, a few minutes to concentrate on something happy
like my son playing in the bathtub and cackling when he was 3, and then I'm
good to go.  Sometimes it's a little tougher than that, but not so often. 
Either way, it's a lifesaver when I'm trying to go to sleep.  I was out of
sorts on the camping trip, but I bet in areas where I'm having illogical
phobias or paranoia like in the earthquake/vulcanism scenerio it'd probably
help quite a bit, as well.  As I seem to recall I was way hopped up on coffee
because I hadn't had nearly enough sleep the night before...

 NB> Offline readers are quite the godsend at times, to be sure... :) 
 NB> Especially since I'm in DOS, not exactly what you'd call a multi-tasking
 NB> environment...  ;) 

  Wow.  Are you using DOS because of older hardware?  Just curious...  There
are a few drop-in replacements for DOS (like TSX-11) that'll give you a DOS
compatible environment that can support some multitasking, I believe.  I mean
not that there's anything wrong with working linear; it's probably a lot better
for productivity and focus.  :)
  I just realized I've still got some old QWK packets sitting here from other
BBSes that I was going to read before I had to reinstall my operating system
for the umpteenth time here, too.  I'll have to break out metamail pretty quick
here, probably.  Hell, it might be easier to use that even for my own BBS; I've
found an issue lately where if I go take too long of a break from composing a
message it logs me out for some reason, and I lose whatever I've already
written.  Not sure what setting I toggled to cause that evil, but I'm not
finding it to set it back easily...
  Best wishes!

  -D
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