A Long Overdue Update

WARNING: POSSIBLE OVER-USE OF PERENTHESIS (these things)

It has been some time since I last made a post to this blog, largely due to how interesting(crazy) the last three quarters of a year have been for us.  I was once told by a "mental health professional" that I had endured the three most stressful events a person usually goes through in the space of a year; getting a new job, getting married and having a child.  Plus we had bought a new car and a home. The last couple of years have given that time a run for its money. 

For those who aren't aware, or simply don't care to remember, two years ago we had moved to the beautiful(blah), vibrant(really windy) and culturally enhanced(almost everyone in or related to someone in the USAF) city(not really) of Great Falls(there aren't any falls anymore due to the dams), Montana(I actually loved living in Montana).

We were moved to Great Falls due to my wife's employer.  Our house wasn't really ready for sale so we(I) rented it out to a friend whom I believed to be reliable and have since discovered was not.  Luckily the second person I rented it to was vastly more mature and a very reliable tenant.  We were renting to them on a possible lease to own condition.

As most people who know me are aware of, I have been a stay at home dad since I left my 12 year job of working as a computer repair technician in 2009.  Since our youngest was ready to enter kindergarten while we were there it was time for me to look for a part time job.  Let me tell you, there is no shortage of people looking for part time jobs in a city which has a significant portion of its population military based.  After not hearing back from most jobs I applied for(which was very depressing) I finally landed a job as a teacher aide at my children's elementary school.  I loved that job.  I was really fond of the permanent registration on Balrog(my Suburban) too.

Oddly, my wife's employer decided it would be best for us to move back to Spokane, WA.  Ah, Washington.  The land of high minimum wage and proportionate over-taxing.  It kind of evens things out.  It cost us about $400 just to transfer vehicle titles and registrations.  Since our tenant was trying to buy our old house we lived at my parents' house for several months.  Unfortunately our renter was unable to buy our house in a suitable time frame and subsequently moved out and we moved back in this past August.  It's a strange feeling, saying goodbye to a home, thinking you'll never live there again, then moving back and some things are different because someone else had lived there and made some minor changes.

So that is basically where we are.  I'm looking for another part time job so I can still take care of the kids and try to pursue some creative endeavors.  Hopefully over the next few months as we settle in more and I can find some of my fun stuff that is still lost in packing boxes and get back into a few hobbies.  I have a corner of the basement configured as a workspace that I can use for some retro computer and AV projects but it's not quite there yet. 

If you've read this far, I'd like to both thank you and apologize.  If I had a budget for awards I would distribute them gladly.

Wow, lazy much? (a pathetic attempt to explain how I neglected my blog)

This has the potential of becoming a trend, my annual post about how I'm going to post more...  How does this happen?  How does something as simple as posting semi-regular blog entries slip through the cracks in my schedule?  Well, frankly, those cracks are kinda big.  Okay, to be honest, really freakin' big.

For most of 2012 I was kept pretty busy with mending fences (quite often) and minor automotive repairs (okay, once) and otherwise maintaining house and home while we lived in Great Falls, Montana.  Yes, I was a domestic technician, though from September of last year to February of this year I was employed as a Teacher Aide for Great Falls Public Schools at my kids' elementary school.  With Mrs. Astro Chicken being a professional in the retail sector and being exploited in the wonderful world of overworked and underpaid salary employees,  work, home and children kept me fairly busy, not to mention the hurried and scrambled mess of moving back to Spokane, Washington to keep her employment with the company.  Since moving back and not being employed as of yet, I'm finding myself with an abundance of free time.

So what's the deal?  I like to write.  I'm not too bad at it.  Sometimes I think I'm actually pretty good, occasionally, those times when I feel inspired and make the effort to fire up NeoOffice or open a browser and direct it to Blogger.  Yeah, I've been a bit lazy since the move back.  I felt like my back and knees were going to go on strike for a while, but that shouldn't have stopped me from writing.  It's a simple thing really, just a few clicks of the mouse, or lately, taps on a screen.  Since no one needs to be subjected to a deep self analysis by me, I'm choosing to blame my tablet.

The newest computer I have regular access to, I mean a traditional personal computer, is a 1.42GHz G4 Mac Mini.  Yep, we bought that baby refurbed direct from Apple just before they were switching to Intel.  Don't even get me started down that road.  It's a bumpy one full of potholes filled with diminishing Apple fandom, perhaps the subject of a future blog post, if I get around to it.  Anyway, as much as I like Safari, and it is a great browser, version 4.1.3 isn't really all that well equipped for modern web surfing.  Also, the kids are accustomed to playing on various learning websites they discover at school, so it was either use my G3 iBook with it's nice but limited 800 x 600 display and chain it to the wall with a power supply or find another alternative.  Enter the tablet.

Last year I considered myself fortunate enough to finally get an Android tablet.  Since I don't have a smartphone and wanted something that would kind of fit the same bill yet be a little bigger, I figured the 7 inch display would work really well, and it has.  But I'm not a touchscreen person, at least not when it comes to typing.  Oh, I can fling tweets like flapjacks off a griddle, but when it comes to really formulating thoughts into words, especially where more than 140 characters are allowed, I likes me a keyboard.  Don't get me wrong, I actually find myself trying to drag web pages using the mouse without the scroll bars, giving the page content a nice light blue highlight, but still, at heart, I miss my trackball most of the time.

The Blogger app for Android actually works really well for me, when I've used it, but there's something about typing on a touchscreen, for me, akin to driving over a spike strip.  It just isn't conducive to helping me retain my train of thought and, when that train derails, no amount of The Fugitive train jumping is going to help that conversation get back to where it was originally headed.  I love using my tablet for everything from checking email and tweeting to reading the news and watching Netflix and anything between, but I just need a tactile response that tells me I actually pushed a key.  It's similar to using the manual shifting feature on my wife's car.  I can bump the gears up or down, but it's just not the same as working the clutch and getting the satisfying feel of a manual transmission.

Do I ask for spousal permission to use some tax refund money and buy a new computer?  That would certainly help with my recent fondness of playing the DayZ mod for Arma II on my son's PC, but do I really need a new computer?  I'm really trying to employ the KISS principal as much as possible.  I've got my Raspberry Pi and a hip deep pile of retro-computing history to keep me satisfied with trips down nerd-stalgia lane, and I wouldn't mind a newer PC for doing some A/V projects I have in mind, but I really only need a computer that can handle composing email and writing, whether it be for my blog or more creative projects.

So what to do?  My tablet functions really well for watching Netflix and Youtube, shopping and casual web surfing.  As appealing as a new notebook sounds, it turns out my 366MHz Indigo iBook G3 with its 800 x 600 display, Airport card and an impressive 320MB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.4 actually works really well with Blogger and Appleworks 6, and while I could easily purchase a descent notebook for under $500, I can get a new battery from OtherWorld Computing for under $60.  Keep it simple, stupid...