This is quite exciting: my wife is now a published author (with her own ISBN and everything )!

Check out her book The Parent Connection for Singapore Math.

She's also got a media set, you know, if you've got $459 and nothing better to spend it on :-P

Austin is just an awesome city.  There's just something about it that attracts me to it.  I can't really say why I like it there so much.  I'm not really a clubber or a bar hopper, so the 6th Street Entertainment District really doesn't do it for me (although it was definitely fun to stroll through there with all of the live music and partygoers).  I enjoy live music, but I'm not fanatical about it (although it was awesome hearing live music all around the 6th Street area after sunset - from bands on the street to bands in open bars).  I like window shopping about as much as any guy does (but it was definitely cool hitting up the row of quirky shops on Congress Ave.).  I'm not really a food snob nor am I really picky about what's "good" and what's "bad" (but I must say, the TexMex in Austin simply trumps anything we get here in NJ).

But I leave you with a badass video from the Austin Zoo during Tiger feeding time:

While small and a bit run down, the Austin Zoo is otherwise awesome in that the crowds are small, the commercialization is low, the peacocks are just free roaming...very awesome, and they have a huge collection of large cats (not to mention a black bear display that is practically asking for a lawsuit because you can literally reach your hand in there and pet the cuddly guy).

So I'm back in Utah.  Today is day one of Programmathon VII. This time, we have two new faces, Dan and Thuy (all the ways from Vietnam!)

The highlight of any of the Programmathons are the meals and awesome sightseeing that we get to do while we're out in Utah (some trips being more memorable than others) to break up the long hours of work and occassional heated technical debates.  Of course Brad would probably disagree: the highlights of the Programmthons are really the 14 hour days we pull to get things done.

We ended up at Park City for dinner on day one.

The steak at Grub Steak was pretty good (and so was the atmosphere), but the waiter totally oversold the awesome-ness of their steaks.  7.5/10.

Luckily, I ended up with a Honda Odyssey instead of the Ford Freestar I was supposed to get.  This thing has some guts...no problem hauling 7 full grown adults up some pretty steep climbs.

Park City is a quaint little area.  The main street is lined with all sorts of eateries, expensive art galleries (expensive).  From left (above): Jim, Dave, Thuy, Me, Dan, and Brad.

More pictures with the locals.

Ice cream at Cow's.  Very good stuff.

Seems like the calm before the storm.  Only a few days left to wrap up version 1.

Warning: massive brain dump ahead...

As I was laying down to sleep and having a discussion with my wife - much to her dismay - the topic of her current graduate class came up and she mentioned how much she enjoyed just sitting down and writing for 45 minutes each class.  I found it strange that she should put it in such a perspective.  I mean, there's nothing preventing her from taking the time to sit down and write for 45 minutes each day (and she did keep a journal up until maybe 3 or 4 years ago) as surely, countless minutes of her day (and any average person's day) is spent doing mindless things like watching television or eating or something else equally useless.

The idea of commitment chains occurred to me as I was using an analogy about exercise and trying to convince her that writing for 45 minutes each day is relatively trival compared to working out.  Think about it: in exercising, one starts a chain of commitments which can seem unconsciously daunting.  To exercise is to sweat, to sweat is to necessitate an immediate shower (well, unless you don't mind body odor or the salty stickiness of sweat), to exercise necessitates a larger load of laundry, and most importantly, in this proposition, is that it necessitates a healthy lifestyle lest that exercise went for naught. 

It is a relatively large commitment chain to make simply by exercising and perhaps this is why so many people find it so difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle: the weight of this commitment chain is simply too heavy.  On the other hand, writing for pleasure carries little commitment of any kind.  You write if you want to, you don't if you are not in the mood.

What's the point?  No point, really   I guess if there was a point, then perhaps it is that very often in life, we don't really take into consideration how little commitment it takes to do what we want to do and do what we enjoy.  We also fail to realize how these low commitment activities have a profound effect on our lives as they help us feel like we've done something.  Simple things like taking a stroll around the block, watering some flowers, laying down and watching the clouds pass, sitting with a cat on the grass, drinking a cup of lemonade on a hazy summer afternoon.  Perhaps that's the secret to finding balance in life: to have a healthy mixture of tasks with long commitment chains (work, family, health) mixed with activies of low commitment (I'm mixed on whether blogging is the former or the latter, but I do find it constructive to put thoughts to text some times).

Shifting gears now.

Prior to this discussion, we had another discussion about how we visualize dates.  I was thinking back to something that I had once read about how to interview tech candidates: propose that some object typically comes in a set of 14.  Now 5 additional elements are introduced...ask the candidate how he or she would organize the new elements.

Some people, like my wife, would tend to place the 5 elements "below" the 14 elements and line them up and start to form a multidimensional array - or a matrix, if you will.  Some people like me, would visualize it as a separate block of elements, but in a linear manner...more like containment where the first set contains 14 elements and the second set contains 5, but they are part of yet a larger set.  It is less of a repeating pattern and more of a general grouping.

This manifested itself clearly in the way in which we think about and visualize dates.  For her, as day of the week is important, she tends to organize her events and key dates in a typical calendar fashion and in fact, she can visualize it so well, that given one event in a month, she can probably tell you the day of the week of any other date in the month nearly instantly.  She views the set of 7 days in a week as a part of a matrix much as a calendar is typically visualized.

In my case, as day of the week is generally not that important, I visualize date and time as linear and quite abstract (I think the most natural way to think about it since it really is linear and absolute...it is only the incidental cyclical nature of our orbit around our Sun that defines constructs like seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years and so on).  In my case, I am terrible at remembering dates and I am terrible at remembering order; I only roughly index that I have something to do some time in the future.  Ask me what I'll be doing two weeks from now, and it'll take me a good amount of time to figure that out whereas my wife's response will be nearly instantaneous.  I tend to think of time in blocks where I have commitments (meetings, errands, and so on) and blocks where I don't have commitments.

When you really think about it, time itself is completely abstract (what is it? will it end? when did it start? how much of it is there? what does it look like? what is the absolute unit of time?  can it really even be counted?), but the organization and demarcatinon of time into units seems...weird and useless to me; I am fine thinking about it in the abstract (i.e. "some time in the future, I need to do this") and not as an absolute (i.e. "on such and such date at such and such time, I need to do this" or "x units from now, I need to do this").  

There is a parallel in my profession: as a software developer, there is nothing tangible about the constructs that I build; the contructs that I build are purely abstract in nature: every GUI, every construct in software, is but an abstraction of numerous lines of code - or, is it the other way around?  Software is but one layer of abstraction on top of another...modern day software could not exist without the huge levels of abstractions that have been built to allow programs to be written efficiently.  Buttons are not buttons, they are rectagles.  Rectangles are not rectangles, they are arrangements of lines.  Lines are not lines, but merely a linear set of pixels.  But in essence, there is nothinig to grasp and to utilize to visualize proportion, all of it is purely hypothetical and kind of "uploaded" into my brain as a set of objects, relationships, and other abstract constructs when I sit down at my desk in the morning. 

In actuality, I find this process of uploading and unloading quite unpleasant (particularly the unloading part).  I have been told by my coworkers, wife, and family members that I can become quite unruly when I'm involved in my work.  The reality of it is that when I'm in my groove, unloading and then loading so much abstraction and so much data causes some sort of mental instability...I just get frustrated at the individual forcing the purge or I just lose my groove and have to kind of veg for the rest of the day...I simply cannot be constructive.

From an observer's perspective, I think this makes me seem like a loner or anti-social or if a colleague is coming to me with questions, it may seem like I'm impatient or uncooperative.  In reality, my bitter reaction is more of a defensive mechanism to kind of keep myself from having to go through these periods of derailment as in my case it's not a temporary derailment...it's like a long term derailment once it happens as there is simply too much data to store and reload that it's taxing on my mind.

For this reason, I think I've recently been in some hot water with some coworkers.  I simply don't take afternoon interruptions very well as that is the time when it is hardest to recover from derailment at that point.

Of course, the whole reason that this discussion and train of thought came up was the movie Stranger Than Fiction (it's an absolutely brilliant screenplay with an absolutely excellent performance by Will Ferrell (everytime you think he's going to break into his "normal" genres, he surprises you and keeps his acting true to the character...a brilliant perfomance)). 

This movie draws my attention on various levels: it is at once a deep inspection of what it means to live and to be alive, it asks what exactly is the scope of one life in the grander scheme of the universe, on some level it is a movie about religion (I haven't really fully formulated this part of it yet), and of course, it's a touching romantic comedy .

I also found the specials (and this isn't the first time) to contain some very insightful information on teamwork and project management that would apply to almost any field (but that's a discussion for another day).

What also caught my attention was how director Marc Forster and the visual effects team realized how Harold's thoughts were visualized with these planar "screens" with metrics, text, and data layered together.  It's much the same way I visualize data, code, structures, and tasks, all on virtual screens that I slide around, stack, layer, and intermingle.  I now realize that there is no organization to how I think about these constructs and abstractions...I simply see them in my mind as if before me was a stack of cards strewn about and yet I am able to reach out and pluck the ace of spades at will with no effort.

Maintaining such mental order requires a lot of effort and a lot of concentration.  I think it is because of the amount of effort required to work the way that I do, that I am so unpleasant when interrupted (much to the dismay of my wife, mother, and coworkers).  And believe me, it's not that I don't like to help others with the development issues or educate other developers and team members, rather such tasks are not my primary concern and shifting gears is extremely difficult when you have to maintain such large abstractions and structures in the mind.

So of course, the question is, what is the solution?  Well, perhaps I need to invest some time in some organizational books.  Perhaps I need a whiteboard to help unload some of the data and make it easier to reload as well.  Perhaps I need a bigger desk so I can scribble more and keep better notes.

Well, I think that about wraps this up.  Possibly not the most coherent or well organized entry, but it contained data would have kept me up all night if I didn't unload it

There used to be a time, decades ago, when there was only one telephone carrier and everyone was forced to use it, regardless of whether the service or price sucked. 

Nowadays we have a much greater variety of choices from AT&T to Verizon to MCI for local and long distance calls.  We also have some new comers to the game such as Comcast and Cablevision who offer telephone service over cable.

For the longest time, my mother was using MCI for her local and long distance.  For whatever reason, she suddenly decided (as she is oft inclined to do) that it cost too much.  We decided to switch to AT&T as she felt that it was a trustworthy and reliable brand.  Little did we know that the new AT&T seems to outsource its customer service, charges a hefty connection fee (even when no physical connection setup was required), and she ended up spending exactly the same each month as she did with MCI...

Jump forward a few months after the AT&T debacle (they were still trying to get her to pay a connection fee...).  After a year, her promotional rate with Comcast for Internet connectivity jumped dramatically.  At this time, her best option - of course - was to switch over to the Comcast Triple Play.  We were assured that the cable telephony was a good choice and that the battery backup on the modem meant that even when the power went out, we would still have dialing capabilities.

Of course, what they failed to mention was that if the Internet connectivity gets flaky (as is oft the case with Comcast), so does your ability to use the phone...D'oh!  Well, it should have been obvious to me, but I dunno, I was thinking that maybe the modem had special capabilities that allowed it to operate indepenently of the Internet connectivity.  Turns out that every once in a while, we'll pick up the phone and there will be no dial tone because the modem loses connection or the DNS servers are down somewhere on the grid or some other issue.  It also turns out that the special telephony modem that we have to use is noticeably slower at servicing Internet traffic compared to my previous Motorola (blazing fast); there is now a noticeable lag when frequenting some of the web pages in my daily queue.

For the time being, the promotional price is great: about $33/month ($99/month for Triple Play for one year) for unlimited long distance to anywhere in the US.  This is much better than what Verizon or AT&T charges for the same features (about $50/month).  What they don't always make so clear is that after a year, the price jumps dramatically to $140.95/month or roughly the same price for telephone service as with Verizon or AT&T...except without the reliability of the good old PTSN.

If you really sit down to think about it, that comes out to roughly $600/year for phone service.  That's PS3 territory.

But there is an alternative, there is a brave new world in telephony: Skype (okay, it's really not that new, but I don't personally know anyone who uses Skype exclusively of landlines (although I know a few who use cellular lines exclusively)).

I signed up for a free trial at the end of last year that gave me 30 days of SkypeOut for free.  I found the service to be generally acceptable and convenient (since I spend almost all day in front of the computer anyways).

But what makes Skype even more compelling are the new accessories which are being developed around it: standalone (no PC requried) devices which allows one to use Skype as a total replacement for landelines.

The two that I looked into were the Netgear SPH150D and the Philips VOIP8411B.  Both of these phones sport the following features:

• The latest DECT technology
• Multi-handset capable (up to 4 each)
• Dual mode (supports PTSN and Skype)
• Don't require PC to use

What seals the deal is that SkypeIn, which allows you to get a number that any landline or cellular line can dial and features unlimited calls anywhere in the US to landlines and cellular lines (and of course free calls to any other Skype user), costs only $60/year.  So for a tenth of the cost of traditional landlines or cable telephony, I can get roughly the same quality services and I can call from my computer.  I also think that the portability is also cool as hell...I can answer my phone anywhere in the world as long as I'm connected to the Internet.

I convinced my wife that when we move this time (just about 20 days to go), we're gonna try to go cold turkey with Skype (we're went with the Netgear phone) and see if it'll work for us.  We both make long duration long distance calls pretty regularly for our jobs so it'll be interesting to see how it works out.  For us, 911 capabilities is not an issue as we both have cell phones.  Dependency on the Internet connection is also not a problem as it's no worse than Comcast or Optimum and whenever we tend to be on long important calls, we also tend to be in some sort of net conference...so having the reliability of PTSN is kind of pointless if the net meeting is down. 

So overall, I'm excited to stick it to the man

I'll keep this site posted with my review and experiences as I spend more time with Skype and the Netgear phone.

Update:

Argh!  Chalk this one up to poor product description, packaging, or something like that, but it wasn't clear at all that one needs to purchase SkypeOut/Skype Unlimited to receive the unlimited outbound calls.  In essence, $60 only buys an inbound number and unlimited inbound calls...outbound calls with SkypeIn are still charged at local/long distance rates. 

I'm kind of conflicted...on the one hand, dude, it's $90 for a whole year.  On the other hand: Damn these people for not clearly advertising their services and costs and using sensible bundles to do so.

1. Cut veggies into large sizes.  This makes it easier to work with them and not have them fall through the grate.
2. Put small items onto skewers.  Items like shrimp just won't work on the grill without a skewer.
3. If you're making chicken or other meats low in fat, brush the grilling surface with some oil first.
4. Make bigger fires.  Charcoal is surprisingly difficult to light without lighter fluid.  Do it right the first time and make a big-ass fire.  Put some newspaper under the coals.
5. Enjoy yourself!

I just finished watching the documentary 49 Up.

There's something quite moving in watching people mature from 7 to 49 in a matter of minutes and to see the change in their ideals, dreams, and their lives.  It was fascinating watching these individuals age and see how their lives took shape.

It's equally fascinating as you start to reflect on where you've been and where you shall be in  more years.

If there's one thing I've taken from the movie, is the importance of being happy in your circumstances and making the best of your lot in life.  Dreams come and go, as do opportunities.  Mistakes are made and there trying times are a certainty, but in the end, it's important to realize the brevity of your existence.  It is easy to blame circumstance and others for one's misfortune and hardships, but ultimately, the life is your own and you must do with it what you will.

The Dalai Lama writes in The Meaning of Life:

Shantideva reasons that if something can be done to fix a situation, there is no need to worry.  Whereas on the other hand, if there is nothing that can be done, there is no use in worrying.

If there is one person in the series that embodied this the most, I think it would have to be Neil, who, for a good part of his adult life, seemed to wander aimlessly.

Neil turned out to be one of the most interesting of the entire group. At seven he was funny, full of life and hope. At 14 he was doing well in comprehensive school but was more serious and subdued. In one of the biggest shocks of the series however, by the time of 21 Up he was homeless in London, having dropped out of Aberdeen University after one term, and was living in a squat and finding work as he could on building sites.

At 35 amazingly, he had turned his life around to a great degree and found his calling in politics.

For some of the kids, like Andrew, life turned out exaclty as scripted (either by themselves or by their parents).  For others, it is a meandering journey where childhood dreams are often crushed by the realities of the world.  The key, I think, is to be able to accept these defeats, take a lesson from them, and to see the opportunities ahead instead of the failures in the past.

The thread that struck me the most about the lives of each of the individuals in the documentary is the common importance of family and how it is a driving force in finding that peace.  Of the subjects, only Neil did not marry or have children; at 49, this lack of a family of his own and the troubled relationship with his parents, was perhaps one of his own greatest regrets in his life.

In reflecting on my own thoughts on this subject, I find that today, I'm much less enthused about the idea of being a father then I was when I was a teenager.  Not because I don't like kids or that I don't want the experience of being a father - one day - but it just feels like I'm still a bit too selfish to my own needs to be a father.  I like living my life on my schedule.

49 Up is an excellent documentary that I think all young adults should watch and study.  I think it reveals a lot about how fleeting one's perception of the world is and how it evolves over time.  It gives insight into what it really means to find happiness and to find purpose in life.

I saw Thank You for Smoking over the weekend, a great movie, and I wasn't planning on writing anything specific about it, but an article that I read this morning (and I guess thinking about the current circumstances of my life) changed my mind.

In an article on SI.com, Chris Mannix discusses how Jason Kidd, perhaps the greatest point guard of this generation (even though Nash has more MVPs to his name), has made a career or making his teammates better.  The most interesting observation that Mannix makes is:

For his part, Kidd relishes the idea of not only making his teammates better, but also serving as a human lottery ticket.

Well, what exactly does this mean, "human lottery ticket"?  Quoting Jason Kidd, he writes:

"I loved playing with all those guys," says Kidd as he walks down the tunnel towards the parking lot. "Rex Chapman. Shawn Marion. Kerry Kittles. Scalabrine. K-Mart. When you can help a guy make a better life for his family, it's the best feeling."

To go off on a tangent, for a moment, at some point in the last year, I was considering leaving Zorch as there were other opportunities available to me with better compensation overall.  But of course, there isn't that satisfaction of being a core component of a small startup.  At some point, the CEO of the company came out for a meeting with a client and had some time to meet me for lunch.  Perhaps the most interesting concept that I took away from this meeting was his statement that he's not in it for himself, he's in it to build the wealth of those around him.

And indeed, our employees are all a close knit bunch with one of our developers having been with him for over a decade through at least two companies.

In a sense, he has a Kidd-esque quality about him.

In quoting Lawrence Frank on what makes Kidd so great, Mannix writes:

"He takes away the thinking process for his teammates. He gets the ball to them on time, on target, so they can just go into their move."

Similarly, I like to think that our CEO (and any good leader) does the same: he creates the conditions for success by taking away the barriers for individual success; he makes it easy to do what you know how to do.

Okay, so back on the topic at hand.  So what does Jason Kidd have to do with Thank You for Smoking?  Well, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), the protagonist of this movie, is asked how he can do what he does, knowing that the entity he fronts produces a product that kills thousands of people a day.  His justification?  He's effortlessly good at it and it pays the mortgage.

In a sense - and I know it's quite cynical - life in the modern world (especially for my generation) boils down to doing everything you can to make that monthly payment; mortgages are a painful reality for the vast majority of us. 

So what is the conclusion to draw from all of this?  I guess this is really a post on career advice: find someone to work for or work with that will be your "human lottery ticket"

How could I have forgotten to post about this?

My wife was recently featured in the Home News and Tribune; not once, but twice!

To begin with, gosh, could they have used worse pictures of her?

But to be honest, it's an extremely proud moment for our entire family (my mom was really going off the walls over this).

My wife is kind of a dynamic person in this respect: you would never guess, just talking to her, that she has a fairly high level grasp of mathematics (not to mention that in person, she looks like she's 18 (especially when she goes with the curly hair)).  I was quite suprised to see some of her coursework in psychology and education which had her in classes similar to mid-high level computer science math courses (probability and statistics).

As a teacher, she's one of those increasingly rare ones that won't take any crap from the students or the parents...she's very straight up to the parents about her expectations of them and how their role in the development of their child (at least while they're in her class) is crucial to the child's success.  She has a whole crazy system in place to make parents and their kids accountable.

So if your school district is intereted in this Singapore math business, do take a look at her SDE profile 

Programmathon was fairly successful. While I enjoy the freedom of working offsite, it's definitely good to get together once in a while and get face to face with everyone (although my gastrointestinal tract begs to differ).

But of course, no trip with Jim is complete without a trip to Hooters :-P

In the Salt Lake City vicinity, the mountains are omnipresent. It's very beautiful out here (but dry as a desert (I started to bleed under my fingernails due to the dryness)).

Of course, we had to visit the Standard Supply company nearby the office where they had a giant toilet (for the obese I assume). Brady labeled this portrait: Stinking Man.

Being Monday, everyone had to go watch 24 (except me as I don't really watch TV) so we didn't go out to dinner, which saved my body from yet another caloric bombardment. I was too tired anyways, so I plopped down and went to bed early.

On day 4, we went up to "Snow Bird" to have lunch at a lodge there. It was absolutely beautiful. Some of those runs looked incredible...but yeah, I'm too much of a pansy to ski :-P Basketball for me, thanks.

As beautiful as the scenery is out there and as nice a place as Utah seems to be, I'm glad to be back home in New Jersey. My skin and fingers are doing better in just a day back home (be sure to bring some moisturizer with urea if you go out there) as the air out there is just so incredibly arid. It's also kind of weird being in a social setting where 98% of the population is so homogeneous.

One thing that I've learned on this trip is that mini-vans actually aren't that bad. The Sienna was quite peppy for such a large vehicle and rode very well. It even made it through 3-4 inches of snow without issue.

It was rough getting out of Newark.  A freak snowstorm delayed the landing of the plane that I was supposed to board and the subsequent snow buildup necessitated de-icing.  I touched down about three and a half hours behind schedule.  To make matters worse, the Hertz counter where my car was reserved was manned by perhaps some of the most incompetent people.  Ever.  There were probably 6 groups in front of me and it took me at least an hour and fifteen minutes just to get my car >:-[ There's something weird about driving a mini-van when you're not expecting it.  While I was supposed to have a Corolla reserved, the only thing they had in the same price class was a Toyota Sienna.  This is actually the first time that I've driven a mini-van...it's kind of weird since I'm used to smaller cars.

We had lunch at Rubio's, a Mexi-Cali place that specialized in fish tacos.  I had a grilled salmon taco, which was delicious (out east, we only have the kinda shitty Baja Fresh).

Dinner was at Joe's Crab Shack, a great seafood place where Jim (our CTO) finally found a satisfactory martini in Utah.  Unfortunately, they also pulled the birthday-boy schtick on me and I had to dance around on a broomstick horse and cowboy hat (I have pictures, but it's just too embarassing)...

This morning, I woke up to find 3 inches of snow on the ground.  But by that time, I was already dressed and ready to go to the gym.  I wasn't too excited by the prospect of trying to drive in the dark to a gym which I only had rough directions to in 3 inches of snow in a mini-van with California plates...

But I'm glad I did.  I ended up at the new Lifetime Fitness gym here.  DAAAAAAAAAAYUM.  This is the nicest gym I've ever seen.  It's bigger than the Costco back home.  The indoor pool had two huge, twisty water slides like the ones you find at amusement parks.  The basketball court was full size, well lit, and they actually had good basketballs, too.  And the workout floor: at least 100 weight machines and wall to wall plasma TVs.  It was kind of weird being the only person in such a huge building...I think I would move out here just for this gym :-P

I ended up at the office earlier than anyone else (or so I thought) so I killed some time by writing my name in the snow...

So begins day two of Programmathon II...

It turns out that Jim had already arrived at the office. He saw my snow writing and walked downstairs and let me in :-P

We had lunch on day two at some Chinese place in the food court at a nearby mall. Damn that gave me gas (actually, I think eating out anywhere give's me gas).

After a long day of programming, we ended up having dinner at Johnny Carrino's. I checked the score on the Colts-Pats game and it looked like the Pats were gonna blow the Colts out.

As you can see, it was my birthday again. Forced against my will, I finished the free chocolate cake and ice-cream.

I really think that one of the big keys to success and happiness in life is to be able to forgive and forget.  With some people, it just comes naturally and easily; they can move on and mend relationships without regards to whatever transpired.

Of course, for many people, this is an acquired life skill that comes with maturity.  Take my mother, for example.  In her younger days, she was probably too unwilling to compromise and too headstrong.  She held her grudges against my father for the longest time, but as the years have passed, she has come to understand how she erred in not being more flexible.  Nowadays, she's pretty much always happy-go-lucky when you bump into her.  Even when we have disagreements or we have a small fight, she never holds it against me.  It's not just me, she's the same way with everyone she meets.

I'm still working on it.  I am kind of egotisctical and unerring in my presumption that I'm always right :-P (just ask my sister).  On top of that, it takes me a long time to forgive and a longer time still to forget.  I hope that I can correct this over time...life's truly too short to hold grudges.  It's just that for some, like me, it takes a really long time for that to set in.

I started thinking about this after reading an article on Jeff McInnis, who was basically banished from the Nets team for a whole year and whose career was put in limbo - especially so considering his age.  But of course, one of the things that comes with age is maturity:

McInnis has refused to criticize New Jersey coach Lawrence Frank, who was apparently upset with McInnis' work ethic following knee surgery last January.

"If that was the case, I'd hold a grudge against every team I've played for," said McInnis, who has played for eight teams. "I can't think of it like that. They gave me $7 million to better my family. I can't be mad at Jersey. They made a decision last summer not to bring me back, but I'm here now. I want to focus on the Bobcats."

"When I was younger I probably wouldn't understand it, but I'm older, I know what's going on. I don't have anything personal against Jersey."

To be honest, with all the trash and rumors I had heard about McInnis and how the Nets treated him (not the classiest ways of doing business), this is a surprisingly mature response.  I hope that I can develop that same outlook on life and learn to be more optimistic and forgiving.

In celebration of this day, I think it's worth the time to listen to a recording of his historic speech.

Could the civil rights movement have had a better, more visionary, and stronger leader than MLK?  It's hard to believe so.  Let's hope that his message doesn't die and lose it's power with today's generation.

I often find myself wondering whom in our time can even be compared to the great people of years past.  Who will we remember as "great" in the decades to come?  It often seems that such people are increasingly rare these days...

I leave you with a passage from his speech which resonates with me:

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

I mentioned a short article on Dean Karnazes in the current (January, 2007) issue of Outside magazine in my previous post.

There's a great passage that I really liked:

I think Western culture has things backwards.  We equate comfot with happiness, and now we're so comfortable we're miserable.  There's no struggle in our life, no sense of adventure.  I've found that I'm never more alive than when I'm pushing and I'm in pain and I'm struggling for high achievement.  In that struggle, I think there's a magic.

Unless you're pushing yourself, you're not living to the fullest.  You can't be afraid to fail, but unless you fail, you haven't pushed hard enough.  If you look at successful people and happy people, they fail a lot, because they're constantly trying to go further and expand.

It's a good mindset to keep in mind as you start out your new year and try to stick to your resolutions

I have no idea why, but I woke up this morning and I thought to myself "I want to dunk" :P

First, a little background: I've been playing basketball on and off during the last 10 years, some times really intensely (like in high school, when I played 2-3 hours every day) and sometimes less (like nowadays, when I only have time to play an hour or two at the gym).  During my high school days, I could actually dunk a ball on the rim (it's true, I actually did it once).  (But alas, cursed with average sized hands for a 5'10" guy, I could never palm the ball with a strong enough grip with one hand for a dunk.)  Yes, at one time, I could actually jump vertically (no running start) and grab onto the rim.

Over the years, as I've become more sedentary, as most programmers are inclined to, I've lost much of that leaping ability (although my calves still look fantastic (no, really )) even with regular weightlifting and workouts.

For the past three months, I've been battling various issues that have hampered my usual workouts: a sprained ankle in Sept./Oct., my intensely dry skin which basically precludes me from playing basketball at all, and my fractured finger (which is just now healing to the point where I can close my fist).  Not to mention that I packed on 6 pounds (mostly -- okay, all -- fat) due to inactivity and holiday feasting.

But I figure now is as good a time as any to work on this goal and get back to my regular regiment.

By way of Google, I stumbled upon an article by Josh McHugh of Outside (which, by the way, recently had an excellent mini article on Dean Karnazes -- so good that someone actually ripped the page out of the Outside magazine at the gym) and Wired magazine fame.  I think I'm gonna try for it.  There's quite a bit of investment involved in some equipment (enough to get myself a Treo 700wx!), but I think it'll be worth it even if I can't dunk, at least so that I can swat some more shots at my gym pickup games :P (man I sound like such an old fart).

JumpUSA has most of the products including:

• A nifty weight vest
• Alternatively, a weight belt
• Jump Soles for working my calves
• These jump resistance ropes

I'm having a hard time deciding between the weight vest and the belt.  The vest seems like it's more natural and easier to deal with (less motion on the body when running/jumping) but seems like it'd collect more sweat and also add more weight above the waist, which could strain my lower back.

So it'll be interesting to see how far I can take it.  I'll keep my progress posted.

Yeah, it's been a looooong time.

First of all, happy holidays to anyone reading this (hi Mom!).

Second, I know, no one likes to read excuses on blogs :P but I swear, I've been super busy and that fractured finger made extracurricular typing difficult.

One of the more exciting things that happened this week is that we switched the whole family to Sprint.  It's one of those weird things...no one I know aside from my boss has Sprint.  No one my sister knows has Sprint.  So it was kind of scary to switch; when you think about it, it's really a huge commitment!  But the allure of Sprint is in their rock bottom prices compared to the other major carriers and also the $15 for unlimited data access (I didn't believe my boss when he mentioned this, but it's true!).

Yeah, it's been a pretty freakin' long time since I've switched carriers, but for the price I was paying, Cingular just wasn't cutting it with the services provided.  For less than what we were paying for three phones (well, we did have 900 more minutes), we now have four phones with unlimited data access on two phones.

So yeah, speaking of phones, I think we may have gone overboard in that regards.  We ended up getting two Treos, one 700p and one 700wx (taking advantage of the 30 day exchange period so that we could figure out which one is better). I've read that the wx has some issues, but so far so good.  While I'm happy with the features I'm getting for my price, one thing that has me second guessing is that there seem to be pockets of my house where I'm roaming (as weird as that sounds).  Well, we'll see how it goes, but I'm loving the download speeds on the Sprint Vision network.

I've also been trying to get back to the gym...man holidays.  I always end up gaining like 6-7 pounds.  This year, it was compounded by my still healing fractured finger.  One good resource I came across is the Mayo Clinic's guide to core exercises.  I'm going to put some of these to good use.

On the professional front, I've been doing a lot of work with WF, WSS3, and Office 2007.  I wrote a great review on Amazon for Essential Windows Workflow Foundation by Dharma Shukla and Bob Schmidt, but it seems like it never made it to the product page :-(  It's a 4-star book for those that want to understand what's under the hood and the internals of WF (from a high level).  It's not a good "cook-book" type of book and it doesn't have lots of pictures, but I think it has some great info.

Well, that about wraps this up.  Happy New Year folks!

Bones?  Halloween?  Yah?  No?  Wait, I got another one: Charlie "digital", get it? Okay, lame, I know .

In any case, that's my finger.

That little piece of bone hanging off of my middle phalange is a chip fracture that I suffered about 4 weeks ago at the gym playing basketball.  Turns out it was more than just a fracture.  As my finger was hyperextended, the tendon at the joint actually tore partially (which explains the excruciating pain and swelling) and as it tore, it actually took a small piece of the bone with it.

The ER doctor had my finger in a straight splint for the last four weeks, which totally messed up my finger because it needed to be in a curved splint to account for the hyperextension and to release stress on the tendon.  Doh!

I've been mostly getting by with 4 finger typing on my left hand, but spelling mistakes are plentiful and I feel as if my WPM is down at least 33%.

Well, looks like it'll be another 2 weeks in a splint for now.  This has me wondering: can/should us keyboard jockeys insure our hands?

In any case: Happy Halloween!

We all have dreams about our own lives.  Where we see ourselves in a few years.  The kind of life we want to live.  You plan your life around these dreams so that they are dreams today, but reality tomorrow.

I have these dreams.  I think about them when I lay down. 

About the house I want to build.  About the life I want to live.  About the family I want to have.

This is the worst day of my life up until now.

Right now, it feels like all of that has been stolen from me...my dreams have been stolen by the person I trusted the most.  It's a sinking feeling...like there's no way back to the surface.

I haven't cried for myself in a long time...not since I was in high school.

Today, I cried for myself...

Quote from an AP article on the Nets:

"We had a lot of conversations about the game itself and about his expectations about who he can become as a player," Carter said. "At first it kind of seemed weird to him, but then after a while when he opened up it made things easier. Once you get it out there in the open and figure out who it is you want to be, you kind of put it together and you become a basketball player."

I'm looking forward to a very productive season from Antoine

A great quote by Joe Torre I came across in an article on A-Rod's recent struggle:

"What Jason said made me realize that I had to go at it a different way," Torre says. "When the rest of the team starts noticing things, you have to get it fixed. That's my job. I like to give individuals what I believe is the room they need, but when I sense that other people are affected, teamwise, I have to find a solution to it."

It's also a great article in and of itself and speaks a lot about how our own expectations, not to mention the expecations of those around us (in this case, millions of Yankees fans) can weigh down on our ability to perform.

I think it also reveals a lot about how one should approach difficult tasks. To seek assistance, guidance, and counsel are things that many avoid in tough times due to pride or some such inner roadblock, but in fact, honesty and openness are the likely best approach. Honesty with oneself about the expecations and one's failure to meet said expectations.

I don't want to get all mushy here and get too deep into this historic event.  I remember being awoken by my girlfriend then (now wife) with a frantic call to turn on the TV after the first plane had already crashed into the World Trade Center.  I watched in disbelief, as if it were some sort of fiction, as the second plane crashed into the second tower on live television.

My mother was a mere five blocks away from the World Trade Center...it was quite frantic trying to check on her condition as all of the cellular channels were overloaded.  Luckily, she was unharmed and was able to make it out of the city that evening.

There's not much else to comment on this I guess, so I'll leave this with a photograph that I took in March of 2002:

There's an interesting thread on Fark about one Raed Jarrar and his experience at JFK airport.

To summarize, Mr. Jarrar had been wearing a t-shirt with the text "we will not be silent" in both Arabic and English.

What followed is perhaps every immigrant or non-anglo's worst nightmare.

It's an amazing account that must be read.  It raises the obvious question, "What the fuck is going on in this country?"

I don't know.  I find it quite scary as an non-anglo American.  While I'm from Taiwan, I wonder how I could be treated by anglo-American's should a war break out with China over Taiwan.  It's a scary thing.  I wonder how my wife
(of Polish-Italian descent) would be treated, sight unseen, as she bears my last name of Chen.  Would her appointments be declined?  Would people change tone once they saw her face to face?  How would people view me?  "Hey, I'm on your side!  Go Taiwan!  Go USA!"  I can only guess what the majority of US citizens of Middle Eastern descent, Muslim or not, are going through right now...

It's depressing in a way because, as Mr. Jarrar states, the very reason so many immigrants have come to call America home is because of the freedoms afforded to us and the Constitutional rights that America instills upon her citizens.

Raed asked of his interrogators:

"Why do you want me to take off my t-shirt? Isn't it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?" The second man in a greenish suit interfered and said "people here in the US don't understand these things about constitutional rights". So I answered him "I live in the US, and I understand it is my right to wear this t-shirt".

Zefrank sums it up best in this video:

As long as a small group of people can inflict mass panic across a large population, the tactic itself will remain viable.  One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself.

The stupidity of the whole situation cannot be escaped: it's a freakin' t-shirt and security let him board the plane with the t-shirt anyways!

As we continue our fight to bring our style of democracy to the Middle East, ironically, we continue to see our rights and freedoms eroded.  Quite a quandary.  It's intriguing to think whether this is the brilliance of Osama in action.  Has he calculated this type of response in his attacks?  Has he forced the West into an anglo-Christian vs. Muslim battle (or at least the appearance of one) so that he might get more support and strength?  Is this how he wants us to react: to create another generation of dis-illusioned and malcontent Muslim youth to continue his Holy War?

While I do believe that Mr. Jarrar was intentionally trying to be provacative, I believe that it is his right to express himself according to the rights afforded to him by the Constitution.  Obviously, they did not deem him to be a threat to security as they let him on the plane after changing his shirt, but I can't help but feel how humiliating it must have been for him to have his rights stripped of him like that.  It would be one thing to request an extra air marshal to keep an eye on him...it's an entirely different story to confront him like this and violate his rights.

There are proponents of profiling that believe that this is the type of action that we need to take to increase the efficiency of our airport security and for the convenience other passengers.  But have we forgotten Timothy McVeigh?  Have we fogotten that white American citizens, working for the US Government, can be had for the right price?  In the end profiling would simply be a "feel-good" security measure that would in fact, decrease the security in our airports.  Even Israelis can find Arabs sympathetic of their cause and convince them (or perhaps force them) to spy on their country men for Israel.  What makes us think that the same couldn't happen with anglo-American's?

I really don't know where I'm going with this, so I'll offer some choice quotes from the Fark thread:

"ingvar" suggests:

If i was there, being an average-looking white (non-terrorist'ish) dude, i'd have stood up and said 'hey man, lets just swap shirts. they won't care if an average-loking (non-terrorist'ish) white dude is wearing an Arab Hate-Spech shirt, it'll just be like "fashion" to these moron's, so lets just swap shirts' .. and i'd let him wear my "Free Winona" or "OBEY (André)", or maybe "Nuke Gay Whales For Jesus" t-shirts

"Scandalous" raises excellent points against the "but it's a private jet" argument:

I cannot believe that I am arguing in support of Raed, but the "privately-owned jet" argument is not very persuasive for the following reasons:

1) Purchase of a ticket forms an express written contract, where the airline gets paid and in return promises to deliver the bearer of the ticket from place X to place Y, subject to certain regulations, and barring unforeseen emergency.

2) There was no unforeseen emergency other than that created by the airline in connection with Raed's shirt.

3) A statute, an airport rule, or an airline regulation are all examples of "certain regulations" in (1) above. The security personnel could not identify a regulation that could bar specific performance of the contract that the airline entered into. Hence, I am not convinced that such a regulation exists. I am therefore compelled to side with Raed in insisting that the airline carry out their side of the bargain.

"Mayhem_King" comments

He is misapplying Schenck v. United States. You can in fact wear a t-shirt that says, "I am a bank robber and going to a bank."

Clear and present danger was replaced with imminent lawless action.

If wearing a shirt with Arabic script is determined to create a lawless action, to be fighting words, or racially offensive, then a policy should be created and applied to everyone. In this case, an ad-hoc policy was created and applied only to him. That's the problem that I have here. If it is truly a problem to wear a shirt that has Arabic script, then add it to the growing list of policies. To be detained by Federal law enforcement until you change your shirt pretty much is a violation of free speach. That ad-hoc policy wasn't being enforced by a private company, it was being enforced by the Government.

mrvikings insistence that it never happened is weird. You can't prove that it happened so therefore, it never happened? Isn't that argumentum ad ignorantiam?

I think it is important that as Americans, we stand up for our civil rights. Standing up for our rights isn't being liberal, standing up for our rights and not letting our enemies get the better of us is extremely conservative.

This past week marked the 25^th year of my life.

I've never been one to dwell on birthdays and the like; I'm not one to believe in relative and arbitrary systems, as our calendar is, but I cannot help feeling...old.

Yup, a "mere" 25 and I already feel old.  My wife says I have some gray hairs already.  You know, in high school, I used to be able to get my whole hand above a regulation rim (genetics cursed me with hands just ever so slightly too small to palm the ball while attempting a dunk); I used to be able to play basketball at the park in the sun for 4-5 hours at a time without much issue.  Nowadays, a few good minutes at the gym and I'm winded and heaving for breath.

Such is life.  Did I mention that I feel old?  Not so much in spirit I guess. I still enjoy many of the same things I did in my younger days (now I'm sounding old, too...just wait 'til I turn 30) like gaming, playing basketball, Scrabble, watching X-Files, and working out.  Simple things, you know?  But at this junction in life, I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm being too simple.  After all, there is a world to see and experiences to live out there.  But then again, I'm quite lazy when it comes to travel (lucky you're not my wife).

Perhaps Perry Bible Fellowship sums up my view of birthdays best with this simple comic strip.  To be another tick closer to the end of it all.  25 is a weird milestone.  It's the age when you're finally allowed to rent cars without penalty.  You typically get an auto-insurance discount when you're 25+.  It's the outlier of that 18-24 age bracket so covetted by advertisers (what, 25 ain't good enough for you?).  It's half ways to 30.

Not all is bad in the passage of the years; my relationships, I think, have gotten better in the last few years.  With my wife, with my mother, with my sister, and with others around me.  I've always been a personable guy (okay, maybe that's stretching it ), but not necessarily a sociable guy (likely due to my INTP profile).  I still live in my head waaaay too much, but I like to think I'm working on that (see what I did there?).

I watched The Weatherman today with the wife.  It's a great movie and I think it only made me start to do a bit more thinking about life.  I'm not sure who originally came up with the saying that "nothing worthwhile in life is easy" (paraphrasing), but it's quite true.  From interpersonal relationships, business endeavors, interior decorating (just because I've been on this interior decorating kick), cooking, basketball, photography, archery, anything...if you don't put effort into it, the end results will be nothing more than a fast food experience: passable, but ultimately unfulfilling and providing little nourishment (and it may even cause some constipation tomorrow).

You know, this last week I was stuck in a hotel in New Hampshire for four days and on my trip home, I contemplated what it was that I missed the most.  It was not my 42" HDTV (though I did miss my ESPN2 and USA Basketball).  It was not my leather office chair (though the room did have the most uncomfortable chair ever designed).  It was nothing like that.  It was my mom's cooking.  I missed it terribly.  I missed it because so much love and care goes into each meal she prepares.  She asks what I want to eat, she cooks with great enthusiasm, and she prepares the food with great care.  It's because it's not easy to prepare a full meal and work a full time job, as she does many days of the week, that I find it so worthwhile and fulfilling (or to put it another way, yummy in my tummy).  Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to "that day".

I guess growing old does this kind of thing to you.  You start to think about the things a little differently.

There is a great article over on SI.com on the story of Kwame James.  It's a great read; don't miss it.

On a (vaguely) related note, I cracked open two fortune cookies on Tuesday and came away with some good fortunes.

Mine:

Don't be discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.

And Sandra's (I stole her fortune ):

Doing what you love is freedom.  Loving what you do is happiness.

I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.

Source.

The way our lives flow through time and the repitition that each of us encounter, day after day, tends to blur the multitude of crossroads that we reach and the different decisions that we make at each of these crossroads.

In a sense, this is what it's like to walk around a crowded city like New York City.  There are turns everywhere and roads and alleys which lead to every nook of the city.  But by design, it's never difficult to get back to where you were in case you do make the wrong choice and turn down the wrong road...these decisions come in passing and perhaps you don't even think about it.

But in every life, there are milestones that approach and crossroads that split into two clearly defined paths with no readily apparent way back to where you started. Looking down either road at this intersection, we imagine ourselves in the future and what it would be like to take either path.  Will we be fortunate and meet success or will it come to be that our decision haunt us in our dreams?  The decision is never easy as unlike a city street, it may be miles before we reach the U-turn.

I've felt this rarely in my near 25 years of life.  Even marriage was an easy and natural decision for me.  And now such a decision weighs on me with a paralyzing force; I just don't know what to do.  I am comfortable, but not completely satisfied.  My sensible side tells me to continue on the path that I have taken.  The dreamer in me tells me to ditch the map and head into the unknown.

Ah, to be at a crossroad in life, to be at once filled with hope and fear as well.

Teamwork is not easy.  It never is.  Whether it's basketball, football, sales, construction, or software, it's difficult to instill a sense of team and ensure that everyone operates as a member of a team.

There are individual egos to deal with, different levels of skill to integrate, different talents that have to be recognized in the context of the team, and there is the ever present problem of communication.

Lately, I've been disappointed in the level of teamwork I've been witnessing on my project (on a scale of 1-10, it'd be around a 2).  Sure we have our weekly call in and discussion and random emails throughout the week.  But is that enough to bring a large system, with multiple components together in a short timeframe?

I recently suggested to my teammates that we've been lacking the team spirit and that perhaps it's a good idea for those that will be interfacing with my component to at least install and test against the actual component that I wrote.  The following is my response to the response that I received, which claimed that such efforts at this time are "counterproductive" (names have been changed):

"counterproductive"?

Hmm...here I thought we were building interacting pieces

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I feel like one person can only take code so far; working in isolation with little feedback leads to code with obvious bad practices and holes that are hard to spot once I've gotten a concept in my head. Not to mention that there will be tons of duplicate work efforts (as I discovered from Brian the other night, the database work I've been doing is also relevant for Don and Sam). I'm 100% certain that there will be bugs and inefficiencies that will only be turned up once you and Sam start to interface with it. Not only in my code, but also in your codebases as well. At least from my perspective, I'd like to find these bugs and hammer them out. To hope for the best when we plug it all together at the last moment is a bad way of working, IMO. I would even propose that the Friday session every week be turned into a full integration and end-to-end test session to get everyone to integrate and test pieces with a seperate Monday session to cover what the goals are for the week and catch-up.

And again, my piece is here to service WildCat and RazorBack...how can I be sure that it does this in an easy to use and well designed fashion if I'm the only one using it? It is certainly easy to use and well designed *to me*, but are there obvious mistakes in the design? Are the major flaws in the code that need to be fixed? Who knows? Everything looks rosy *to me*. End-to-end testing has not been done or setup and I feel that there are sure to be issues that will only be uncovered with end-to-end testing. I know there are flaws and I want to fix them, but many of the flaws are not so apparent to my eyes but would easily be exposed by end-to-end testing and WildCat and RazorBack actually integrating with the pieces.

I understand that we each have responsibilities. But isn't part of my responsibility to ensure that my piece properly services WildCat and RazorBack? Alternatively, isn't part of WildCat's responsibility to ensure that it can tell EastCastle to do what it wants?

I feel like the way we're working is much like a football team which never practices as a unit, each player only works on individual drills. Come game day, now all of a sudden the team is expected to play as a unit. How can the coach predict whether the team will work well if he never sees them practice as a unit? This is unrealistic even for the most skilled professional football players (that's what training camp and full team non-contact drills are for)...how can it be realistic for us? I dunno...building large systems is no less a team game than basketball or football or crew : the team that trains together wins together. Expecting pieces to magically work together after weeks or months of development in silos is dangerous and unrealistic to me.

Teamwork is difficult for any group of guys and gals.  Doubly so when the team is dispersed.  But is it "counterproductive" to try to build upon a team effort and really have everyone write software as a team?  Is it really an idealistic view of how software should be written that I'll discard as I age and become more cynical?  Bear in mind that I'm not debating "Aristocracy, Democracy, and System Design" as Fred Brooks does in Chapter 4 of The Mythical Man Month, as I strongly believe in "conceptual integrity" as a basis for simplifying and clarifying a framework or codebase.  But rather, what I'm questioning is the team working completely independently with little communication and actual testing of interfaces.

I'll admit that I myself haven't been the best of team players, but, none-the-less, all I was seeking was a minimum amount of teamwork: integrating pieces once in a while in "practice" as opposed to integrating in the few minutes leading up to game time and hoping for the best, you know?

That's Quincy, our new bearded dragon.

Interesting little critter...quite aware of us and of the surroundings; extremely inquisitive and quite cute But also quite a pain in the ass to take care of.

It was quite disturbing.

I was mowing the lawn and ran over a baby rabbit with the lawn mower.  I didn't see it in the tallish grass and it didn't move as I approached.

Ironically, I probably saved the life of the same rabbit three weeks ago when I mowed the lawn and noticed 6-7 of them huddled in a depression in the lawn and moved them to a safer area of the yard.

It was still alive and squirming after I ran over it with the mower.  I was struck with a deep sense of grief (seriously) and couldn't decide what to do.  I was thinking maybe drown it or put it under my car tire and back over it and give it a quick death.  But even that was painful to think about.  My heart really sank for a minute there.  I really couldn't imagine taking its life in any way, but at the same time, I knew that it probably wouldn't survive; a sense of panic washed over me.

Luckily, my mom was around.  She says it was dead when she picked it up.  But I suspect she killed it to end the suffering.

I really don't ever recall being in a situation like this before and I hope never to be again.