Today I am in Mequon Wisconsin. Came up here with Frank.

The issue I proved before has been fixed. They changed long distance carriers, and the weird echo went away. Must have had something to do with how the telco handed off to the LD carrier - but whatever.

Frank is working on the phone system, and I am here to look pretty. Damn, I look pretty.

The thing that really torques me off is that I can't get on AIM because AIM traffic is blocked by the firewall here. Lame. But the thing that really totally torques me off is that I can't even get the Java AIM client on the web to work. Completely lame.

So anyway, now I'm going to help the office manager here move from one office to another. I just moved her phone and made sure the network port was live. Next to the computer.

It looks like it'll be a short day, I think. Sadly, I have to drop Frank back off at the office, so I might have to actually go back in there. Or not.

Haven't checked in for a little while, so here I am.

Caden has started "gooing." When I say this, what I mean is that he is speaking in full sentences, all the words of which are "goo" or "gooo" or "goooo" or sometimes "boo." He does this for fifteen minutes at a time, and there is no possible way to pay attention to anything else while he's doing it. It's amazing to see that he has control over his voice and chooses to use it to communicate with me and Bridget.

My MCSE class is almost over. Thursday is the last one. I still have five tests to take, and I was kind of planning to take one this Friday, but I am required to go to Milwaukee for no reason. They're having an issue with the phones in their office there, and last I was there I proved that the issue was with the phone company. But the phone company guy who came out was a complete moron and chose not to understand what I was explaining to him. So Friday me and Frank, a consultant, are going up to lay smack down. At least I'll get paid mileage and the company is damn well going to buy my lunch. I may get back home earlier than I normally would anyway.

Mike Hentschel is in town this week. Bridget ran into him at a wedding, and he came over Monday night to hang out and stay with us for the night. He drank one of those Sparks drinks, so I only have two left. He's talking about getting a job with USAID and going overseas for a while. It's weird what people end up doing without even thinking too hard about it. He realized recently that he has ten years' experience in law enforcement. He's been a kind of parole officer for a long time. Who knew?

First Father's Day report:

That was pretty cool. I got this grill. I drank some beer. I ate some bratwurst from The Wurst Kitchen, which has no web presence whatsoever, apart from weird things about rendering and meat processing.

I also bought some of this crap. Tastes like Triaminic. Comes in a four-pack. I have three left, for whoever wants them.

So here's what's happened to me at work over the last two days.

Tuesday night I'm in class, and my phone beeps with voicemail. I don't get good reception in the classroom, that's why it didn't ring. I checked caller ID to see if I could figure out who it was, but it didn't register. So I step out to check it. Bridget doesn't call me during class unless it's important, so I figured there could be some emergency. This was about 8:15.

The message was from my CEO's assistant (to be referred to as Asst from hence forth). It said, "CEO is having a problem with his computer at home, please call him at [phone number]." His home computer is a home office computer, so I am responsible for it, but not knowing what the problem actually is is frustrating.

I troubled over this for a moment before I decided that I was not going to call him back. I sent Asst an email by Blackberry to find out what the problem was, to state that I wouldn't be in a position to do anything until morning, and that if it was a real emergency, I could do something about it at ~11 PM that night (after getting out of class and home and greeting my family).

Then mail started arriving on my Blackberry. Turns out the issue was with a program called Earth Viewer.

Let me explain what Earth Viewer is. It's a subscription service which allows you to view 3D images of the earth. From any distance. In fly-by if you want. The images are assembled from satellites and aircraft with cameras on them. The images are not realtime; rather they are between 6 months and 2 years old.

Asst also sent an email to me and the other guy here in the office to try and get someone to take care of this. She reported that CEO got an error message about not being able to connect to the server. Other Guy replied with the information that his home phone lines were out of service, so he wouldn't be able to do anything. Asst replied saying that she had called me and CTO, and hopefully one of us would call CEO back.

At this point, I'm livid. I reply to Asst and Other Guy and add CTO, saying that this is not at all business related, nor is it an emergency, and that no one should be calling my personal cell phone under these circumstances, nor should questions about non-work related things ever reach me after hours.

CTO calls me about an hour later. He'd been in meetings in the city till late. My first instinct was to tell him that this should wait until morning. While he agreed with everything I said, he told me that I should have put that to him and not to Asst. Fine. He related that CEO wants everyone to be at his beck and call 24/7 -- I interrupted, saying that I would be glad to do that, as long as I'm getting paid. CTO also related to me that Asst had called his house and talked to his wife. He also said that I didn't want to lose my job over something like this.

Whoa, hold on. I stopped him. "You mean to say I could get fired for this?" No, he said, but there could certainly be issues is Asst didn't handle things properly, and decided to just tell CEO that I wouldn't help him.

At this point, I'm thinking that Asst, who's fairly green in handling CEO, is the stupid one. Don't get me wrong, she is stupid, as evidenced by the fact that she forwarded my mildly scathing email to CEO.

Next day, Asst starts talking to me, and she's as pissed off about this as everyone is. Apparently, when CEO called her at 7PM, she asked him if the issue was personal of company. "Company," he said. And he kept pushing her to get someone get someone get someone.

(Sidebar: the actual issue was that the EarthViewer server was unavailable. Nothing to do with the company network at all.)

Later in the day, about 4:30, I get email from CEO saying that it was work related, that he was entertaining fancy-pants clients at his house, that "We were discussing a multi million dollar transaction that will benefit our shareholders.," and that "If our employment system works for you great, if not, let me know."

Apparently, the business purpose of the expensive toy (which I also found out was paid for by the company, and we're buying him a new computer for the office office so he can use it here, never mind the fact that it's going to hog all the bandwidth on the T1 and cause employees who are trying to get to the CRM and accounting systems to have trouble) was to be something to impress other important people with. By that logic, his house and fleet of expensive cars should be paid for and maintained on the company dime. What if he'd wanted to show off one of his cars, and it wouldn't start? Does he have a mechanic on call 24/7, and how much does the company pay for that?

After I forwarded CEO's threat to CTO, he called me again to reassure me that everything would be just fine, that he would handle it. We keep getting pushed by CEO to cut costs and watch budgets. We also get prodded for ways to make this company the best company to work for. Hell, our tagline is all about helping clients keep their best people.

So at this point, I have to think that either the company is trying to keep its best people, and I am not one; or that the company is not trying to keep its best people and it's all just a big lie.

Either way, I'm looking for another job. I haven't lost this one, and I doubt I will. But CEO wanted me to let him know if the "employment system" worked for me or not. I'll tell him with my resignation. Besides which, I was wholly unaware when I took this job that part of my job description was to be the CEO's bitch. If I knew that ahead of time, I would have insisted on a much higher salary. They wouldn't have given it to me, and I would have taken the job anyway, so it's really a moot point.

Oh yeah, when Caden woke up this morning, Bridget sent me in to take care of him. Which is fine by me - I get to spend some time with my boy while my wife sleeps, and I get up on time to get ready and leave for work. As soon as he saw me, he smiled. Then fussed. Then smiled again. Then fussed again. While I was changing him, he was both extraordinarily happy and completely pissed off at the same time. What a riot.

So I put him in his bouncy seat show, which he usually likes. He liked it well enough to pay attention and be quiet, but he was still a little fidgety. Once I got out of the shower, I picked him up and he calmed right down. Almost went to sleep. It was time for me to go to work, so I gave him to Bridget and they both went back to sleep in the bed.

Bridget reports that Caden has begin punching things, most specifically the octopus which is one of the hanging toys in his little activity center thingy. She also reports that he has been saying "goo." All of these things happen during the day when I am at work and class.

When I got home last night, it was time to put him down to sleep. I wanted to do it, and he was fine with that, so long as he could see his mom. As soon as she stepped out of view, he began squirming and screaming. She came back in and took him and he was fine again. After she got him settled down, I took him again and he woke up fussy once more. But I did finally get him to relax and he was mostly asleep. Then he was wide awake again, and Bridget took him back. I was satisfied by that time that he didn't hate me, so that was okay.

Okay so the last one was a little somber. And it's been a while since I put anything down here, so I'm sure you're wondering whatever came of this.

I picked Caden up from Bridget's parents' that evening, and instead of crying and getting down on myself, I was thrilled to see him. He was happy, I was happy, everything was right with the world. When Bridget came home, I slipped back into my old ways.

Skipping over all the intimate details, we discussed the issue, I got pretty upset, but when that part was finished, I felt a lot better. Have I smoked since then? Yeah, like one a day. But I'm doing a lot better than I was before.

Caden had his giant poop this morning. It was one that required him to take a bath immediately afterwards. The big problem is that he does part in the diaper, then a bunch out of the diaper, and only pees after the pooping is finished. So while we're trying to keep him from getting covered in his own shit, he throws a curve ball and pees into the air. Justice is served, however, as this morning the pee went right in his own face. Twice.

The jig is up.

Back in August 2002, when I found out about my pending fatherhood, I quit smoking. I had been smoking about a pack a day since 1988. I did a damned good job of it, too. Three days on the gum, and then nothing.

Well, I can't really say nothing. I did have a cigarette every once in a while. Like one every couple of weeks. And when I was out of town on business, I'd break down and smoke a packe over the course of three days. But when I came back, it was back to normal.

So the new year comes closer, and I finally get down to finding a psychiatrist, so I'm not a total wackjob by the time the kid comes out. That was a complete ordeal, getting passed around from operator to operator, asking them all to find me a shrink, and each one saying, "We don't really do that ..." What the fuck do you do then??

But I struggled through, and found someone and made an appointment. There was a wait of about six weeks between my making the appointment, and the appointment date. But okay that's done. I have that to look forward to. I even did the math on when the meds would probably start kicking in; I was cutting it close, but they should be taking effect by the time my son was born.

On the day that I was all ready to head in for my first appointment, I get a call from the doctor's office saying that they had to reschedule it for two more weeks out. Well that just fucked everything up! I was livid, after all I had gone through to get this set up in the first place. I was panicking. I bought cigarettes.

Just a pack, and smoked them over the course of those two weeks. That did it, though, and I've been smoking a couple of packs a week since. Am I proud of this? Not at all. Do I think I can quit again? Yes I do. Has this been a difficult thing for me? Yes it has.

Could I tell Bridget? No; she'd made it perfectly clear that if she found out I was smoking, she'd kick my ass. And this was before Caden was even born, so I certainly couldn't tell her then. She'd have gone ballistic on me. So I hid it. I would be able to reel it back in at some point, now that I'd be on a regular schedule with meds and doctor's visits.

That didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, since every single appointment I make with the shrink gets rescheduled for two more weeks out. Once I ran out of meds and had to chase around to get the prescription refilled. Add to that the fact that the guy I'm seeing doesn't ever really ask me anything about how I'm doing, and I'm basically on my own plus meds.

So last night, after class, I come home and she smells it on me. She asked if I had been smoking and I came clean. I got the silent treatment, she went up to bed with Caden and I slept in my chair downstairs.

I'm sure she's upset because I hid this from her. I can think of several times when I outright lied about it. Her: "Can you even imagine being a smoker now that you're a father?" Me: "No." As time went on from the beginning, my failures only multiplied.

When I woke up in the morning, I went up to bed first and lay there next to Bridget and Caden, who were both sleeping very soundly. Caden was completely snuggled up with her. This was 6AM, about the time he usually starts to stir, and she asks me to go change his diaper and then we have happy, smiling awake time. Or I carry him around in his bouncy seat with me while I take a shower and get dressed.

They were sleeping, and stayed that way. Caden made a couple of noises, and I tried my best to peer over the top of his head to see his face. But he was turned in towards Bridget, and I didn't get very far. I could see his long eyelashes, and the tip of his nose, and I wanted to stroke his fuzzy head.

I didn't. I went downstairs and took my medicine, then headed back up to take a shower. About halfway up, I sat down on the stairs crying. I'd been down since the night before, just like I used to be all the time. I had tried to be a good father and failed. I was separate and distant from my family that I love so much. I had been voted off the island, and the remaining contestants had decided to share the grand prize between themselves.

Bridget has had a brief conversation about my paycheck with me on IM today. She goes to work at 3:30 today, so I won't see her until late tonight. I'll be picking Caden up from her parents' after work. I expect that she'll have told them all about all of this, and that I'll be voted off their island, too.

I'll drive him home, and he won't remember anything about any of this. He'll be the same baby he was yesterday and the day before. I'll have to feed him at least once, which means I will have to hold him, and he will probably be smiling and happy at some point. I really don't feel like I'm responsible enough or good enough to hold him and play with him. I don't deserve to be a father.

I will very definitely do all of those things that need to be done with babies, because I am a father, even though I don't deserve to be one. I will also cry.

I have caved. I have made the background image on my work computer's desktop a picture of Caden with his arms out, smiling.

I have always hated those people, with the pictures of their kids all over their computers and desks and everywhere all the time. Now I am one of them. I still hate those people, the other people, who set the background to "Stretch," so that the tiny picture is now huge, out of proportion and grainy. I have not done that. I have only sharpened the image in Irfanview, and left it on a black background. Not some crazy, twisty, make your eyes freak out and cause remote control sessions to behave erratically crap. Just plain black.

I went to the shrink again on Friday. I'm less than satisfied with the level of service I'm getting from that office.

First, they called my house early and told my wife, "We've had a couple of cancellations, so we need to move the appointment to 2:45." It was originally scheduled for 5:30. Whatever. I do not understand how other people cancelling their appointments cause my appointment to have to be moved, unless the doctor wants to leave early for the holiday. This on the heels of all three appointments I've already had being rescheduled for completely different days.

So I get there at 5:30. Only the doctor is left in the office. He talks to me for a while, and I say, "Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah," a lot. I actually had to interrupt him to say things, which he then moved right past anyway. He gave me the title of a book he wants me to read.

Then, while bidding me farewell, he said I'd have to call on Tuesday to make another appointment, because there wasn't anyone left in the office to make appointments.

I'm starting to wonder what I'm paying for. So I'm going to look for another doctor's office. The prescription I have now actually has a refill on it, so that gives me a little time.

We went to Madison this weekend to see David and Vanessa and teeny Max. Bridget was telling them what to do, and they enjoyed receiving those suggestions. Still, I felt it necessary to temper Bridget by telling her to stop telling them what to do. We had a good time, going for a walk, eating bagels, cooking out, watching Cops. Watched a lot of Cops, so I got that going for me.

The Cops episodes were real old, too. Like over ten years old, gauging by the cars. But apart from that, hardly anything has changed. Criminals are still doing the same stupid crap now as they did then. Cops still have the same cop haircuts now as they did then.

It's good to have some stability in your life.

Sometimes, in the past, I would have dreams. Good dreams, where I was happy and things were right. Sure, maybe the dreams would be all weird and surreal, but the feeling I had in the dream was good. Then I would wake up and realize it was just a dream and realize that I was still in the drudgery of my awake life.

Not that my awake life was actually intolerable. I was only perceiving it as such.

Now, I look at Caden and Bridget and I feel like I did in those dreams. And I keep expecting to wake up to drudgery again. I can feel how good things are now, but the goodness still feels fleeting and intangible. It's a nervous time for me because of that.

Bridget says his cord is hanging by a thread, and will likely come off this week. It's about time. I can't wait to play with his bellybutton, because I think he might find that amusing, and I will definitely find it amusing.

Speaking of Bridget, she's been working as a waitress for three days now, and doesn't completely despise it yet. The rest of the staff is giving her a little crap about how she thinks she's going to hit the floor and make mad tips, even though she's a total rookie. Her response: "I might just be good at this. You never know." They don't know who they're talking to. She's gonna show them all up.

This morning, on the way to work, it was overcast. It must have been quite an interesting world when no one knew what clouds were. When I look at them, I think big bunches of water vapor condensed around dust particles, and sometimes it rains. Caden, on the other hand, has no idea. He just looks up and sees a big, wide swipe of various shades of blue-gray.

I tried to look at the sky through his eyes, and I succeeded to some degree. And the cows and the trees. But not for long, because I was driving and you have to stay in the moment with that.

What I did realize, once the strip mall area came up, was that people's creations of signs and buildings and roads have nothing on nature's trees and hills and animals.

Maybe I'll go hang outside at lunchtime today.

Okay a bunch of news.

Vanessa and David have had their son, Max. We took Caden up to Madison, WI, to meet him, and he traveled very well. Max is like holding a saltine cracker in comparison to Caden. We are also guessing that Max and Caden will be the next Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Cause they're so cute.

Caden had yet another most giant poop of his short life this morning. I wasn't there to see it, but Bridget reports that she "cannot begin to describe the amount of poop that came out of [my] son." I have to think he's a pound lighter now, because he hadn't had a big poop for an entire week.

The wind of last weekend is all but forgotten now, and I have a plan to line the back of my yard with hedges to piss off all those fuckers who built fences all around me in an attempt to block off the utility pedestals from their own yards.

Bridget starts as a waitress at a fancy restaurant tonight. She's going to try it out and see if she can work part time there and no time as a retail manager. This would be great, I think. She's managed for quite a long time, and I think she needs a break from that as much as anything. I'm very curious to hear about how this first day goes, but she doesn't get home until late. I just looked at the clock and realized that she's already there working. Good luck!

Which reminds me - I have to pick up our son from her parents house. That would be funny if I forgot that, huh?

I neglected to mention that I have passed two of the seven required MCSE tests.

What is the deal with the wind already? For 48 hours now, it's been as though we are in a bad sci-fi movie, perhaps Kevin Costner's "Windyworld." It's starting to piss me off.

It's Mother's Day. I bought Bridget a gift certificate for a massage - actually it's just to Mario Tricoci's, where massages can be gotten, among other things. I insisted that it must be used on a massage. We ate corned beef and cabbage at her parents' tonight, and it was real good.

Last night we went out to Payton's all by ourselves. We left Caden with his grandma, had some dinner and a couple of beers, and came back home by 10:40. It was past our bedtime before we even left. Bridget asked me on the way there, "Do you think he misses me?" and several times during our outing remarked, "I wonder what they're doing now?"

We may not go out again for quite a while.

Yesterday morning he had happy time. Smiling and almost laughing for a good 30 minutes straight. It was wonderful.

I was feeding him late last night in his room, and he was kind of smiley after that, too. I tried my hardest to recenter my world view around him. Instead of focusing on the importance of work, or the neverending distractions I entertain myself with, I tried to center my world around Caden and picture everything in relation to him. I was not able to do this as well as I had hoped. I need more practice, and I was in a marginally uncomfortable position in the chair. Still, it's a good goal to have.

I've also made the discovery that, trite though this may sound, every smile I get is priceless. Every single one makes me the richest man in the world, for just a little bit.

My shoulder and back have been killing me for almost a week. I think it started when I was holding Caden all crooked.

He wanted to be held over my shoulder, but I wanted to be able to see him. So I twisted myself up for an inordinately long period of time. This, I think, is what has led to my injury. I shall suffer.

My third doctor's appointment was supposed to be yesterday. Yes, they canceled it again. That's zero out of three appointments they've kept. I would look for another shrink, but it was such a hassle getting this one, and he does keep the drugs coming. That's all I need anyway, really. The times I have talked to him haven't brought me any new insight, it's just been me saying, "Yeah, this and this and this," and him saying, "That's because that and that," and me thinking, "Yeah, I know. When will these appointments start to be useful?"

This blog was originally supposed to be about Caden. As soon as he can type, I'll set him up with his own blog. That should be interesting.

I'm getting my first tests scheduled for this coming Friday. Two should be fairly simple, and those are the ones I'm taking. The other two I'm going to have to crack books for. It's the kind of thing where if I was sitting down building a network, I could do it no problem. But they ask you stupid questions like, "What's on this applet, this tab, this button, this checkbox? What does that do?" Well shit, if I could just look at the system, I would know. I can't think of a situation where I would need to know that without having access to a system I could check it on.

He woke up at 4:20 this morning and Bridget got me up to settle him down. He was extra grouchy, and, as a result, so was I. I haven't been getting much sleep lately. But I know Bridget has to get up and feed him twice in the middle of the night, so I'm not trying to say I'm getting the short end of the stick. I'm just saying it's wearing on me.

I don't get a lot of time at home, especially with my long commute and class on Tuesday and Thursday. It's pretty crappy. The weekends rock; I get to have some good long slouching sessions with the boy.

Anyway, last night the solution was the bouncy seat. The bouncy seat it a fantastic invention, as it requires a minimum of effort to generate a respectable bounce. My only problem is that it's near impossible to do this comfortably from the bed, with the next on the floor nearby, because the sleeping surface of our bed is seven feet off the floor. I expect that if we had a normal height bed, it would be pure bliss.

I came up with that while trying to find a comfortable position for bouncing the bouncy seat. Then I thought about the specific frequency of the bounce, and wondered whether that frequency was engineered for a scientific purpose, or if it was pure accident. I also thought about how to make that bounce frequency longer by extending the wire frame so that the seat was further away from the fulcrum. Then I considered that maybe they didn't make the seats like that because then they'd be too large and unwieldy, or from saftey considerations with the baby would be sitting so high off the ground.

Then I wondered why adults didn't have their own bouncy seats. Sure, we have armchairs and recliners, but those pale in comparison to the metal frame bouncy seat. I imagined that adult bouncy seats would have thick chrome tubing for the frame, and some kind of thick stylish fabric for the seat. They could also vibrate, but would probably not have a removable "action station" that runs on a 9-volt battery.

Then I remembered these porch chairs that my great aunt Alma used to have, which were made of metal and had a bouncing action very similar to the adult bouncy seat I was developing, and how I liked to sit in them so much when I was in fifth grade and went there after school. They were painted this weird dusty lavender color.

She would sometimes take me downtown on the bus to go to Kresge's, where there was a small fast-food cafeteria inside. She only ever let me eat there once, and I got a burrito. I was hoping that it would be better than the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she made me at the house, but it wasn't.

She would put actual butter on them with the peanut butter and jelly. I finally had to tell her not to do that anymore. I think I might have hurt her feelings, but I had to do it. I couldn't stomach another one of those disgusting sandwiches, which I did eat on a daily basis specifically in order that I did not hurt her feelings by refusing to eat the food she had so kindly made.

Then I fell asleep for about 20 minutes before Caden woke up again.

Caden usually sleeps in the bed with us. Last night, I awoke to a cry and Bridget shoving me because I had nearly crushed him with the weight of my obese sleeping body. I didn't even feel him; she says I was on his head. That I was sleeping on my back and his head was underneath me. We're pretty sure that he's forgotten about it by now, but I haven't yet.

Bridget took the edge off a little this morning by reminding me that he was none the worse for wear, and then turning to him and saying, "That was the first time that mommy or daddy practically kills you." I get the sense that we're in for a lifetime of hair-raising, near-death experiences. Like he's going to be a volunteer human shield when he grows up instead of, say, a corporate executive.

You know, I think I'd be all right with that. I hate fucking executives. You wanna know why there's unemployment? I wonder how many normal people those executive pay packages would support, if only they were spread out among many instead of being hoarded by one.

Yesterday he had the biggest dump of all time. He was cutting loose on my lap for about five minutes straight. No fussing or crying, just straight up dumping. I called Bridget as a witness and for backup. She heard him from the kitchen he was so loud. I had expected to handle this all myself, just to have Bridget available in case of emergency, but she went right for removing the diaper on her own, so I wasn't going to say anything till it was over.

It looked like someone had poured an entire jar of caramel sauce in his pants. We were cracking up at the scope of this poop, and Caden just lay there with a look on his face like, "Yeah. I did that. That was me."

He slept real good last night, about five hours in a row. And he was awake an hour or so before that and after his last feeding. He went a long time without eating, but it didn't seem to bother him at all.

Caden was outside yesterday with his eyes open. For a long time. He pretty much liked it, and he spent a good portion of the time sticking his tongue out at me. I wanted to take pictures of him making the tongue faces, but by the time Bridget came out with the camera, and unbuckled him from his carseat harness and etc etc - tongue face time had ended.

He's able to focus on objects about ten feet away, and he can follow them left and right from that distance. He's been getting better at saying "nnnn-GAAaa" when he's crying instead of just "AAAAAAAA." This is kind of nice. Even though I still can't tell what he wants from this attempt at communication, at least I can tell he's trying.

There was a short period of time where his crying could be very frustrating to me. I felt like I was doing something wrong, or at least not doing the right thing, and that was why he was crying. I don't feel like that so much anymore. It's gotta suck to be experiencing some form of mild discomfort and have no idea how to express that to anyone, not even to yourself. I think the crying comes more from the frustration of not being able to communicate than the actual discomfort.