Gradin.com » awareness

A Baby Changes Everything

Olaf — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:48:20 +0000

Remarkably, the biggest change at the Gradin household is simply in our perception. There are all sorts of things that change when a new child is born into your family. Your free time dries up, your bank account empties, you become more selfless. But when you already have an older child, the thing we noticed was that the older child stopped being a baby in our eyes. I never realized how big he was – how big his hands were. It’s harder to carry him sleeping into his bed at night. This new addition, so small and defenseless, makes us realize in ways you can’t truly convey to anyone that she’s the only baby in the house. Perhaps Balthazar became “our first child.” Even though he’s only five years old, I sense that he’s more in charge of his destiny and in self discovery now. Sorscha, on the other hand, seems to have so much more malleable potential tied up in her.

I’m doing my best to ensure that I don’t lose sight of the treasures still to come in our first-born while our attention is diverted to this little girl. It can be a struggle keeping up with everything at home while still making time for me and Balthazar to play the games we used to play. Easing that, he’s recently really gotten into board games. I can keep an eye (and ear) on Sorscha while we play board games without being too distracted to give him my attention. It’s also easier to allocate this time, as our outside time has been cut short for the coming winter.

This experience of having our second child – some 5 years apart from our first – has given us new wisdom that I feel one can only gain through life.

One cannot fully appreciate what happens to the being at the birth of your first child. You undergo a transformation unlike anything before or after that moment. I remember seeing a baby born vaginally when I was an adolescent, and the experience gave me some spine-tingling chills that hinted at this fact. When we had our first child, the internal shift from my awareness of self: man, husband, child, protector, supplier, etc., went spiraling around and may have momentarily just been forgotten. It didn’t matter anymore. The thing I remember most – and perhaps something that sums up a great deal of this feeling – is that I lost my sense of invulnerability. Perhaps it’s passed on to the next generation – much to a parent’s chagrin.

Now at the birth of our second child, we see the real development of our first. Less of the initial surge of fatherhood that fills you, though a new awareness of everything that can’t be ignored.

I really mean to say that there are some lessons in life that we’re taught, but can never be appreciated until experienced. You were told that you’d one day look back at your school days and realize you were having the time of your life. You’re told that a child will change you. I’ve heard that time flies as you get older. “One day you’ll understand…” All of these things go unheeded as our elders press them into our heads. Being at the crossroads of naivety and understanding, I want to impart a sort of enlightenment to those behind me on the path. But who am I kidding? I’m just saying the same thing…

Top 5: Things You Wanted to Know About Me

Olaf — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:41:50 +0000

The meme is apparently now a lost word; used only by uncool dads and hipless (as in the lack of being hip) half-wits. I’m getting on in years, relatively speaking, and am inclined to use such lingo as to embarrass those who would be so easily offended.

For lack of better alternatives, I bring to you the current meme on my plate. Young whipper-snappers may be unfamiliar with this word, but it is essentially an Internet chain-letter. Spazzmanda passed this on to me from her blog, where she refers to such activities as “tagging.” I always thought that was a cultural art of defacement by way of graffiti, but what does an old fart like me know.

The Rules: Rules are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their names. Then the player goes to each of the “named” people’s blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. If you’ve been tagged, you do the same, letting the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. Your answer, of course, is the answer to the following questions. Here we go!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? One decade ago I was two months from my 2nd wedding anniversary with my lovely wife, Amy. We had no children, though we had pets. We were in our first year at our first house together (and current house). Amy was still in school at North Georgia College and State University (though it may not have been a State University at the time), and I was working for…Whittman-Hart, perhaps. I was a consultant beginning to cut my teeth on information systems security. It would be my primary job and objective for the next several years. I registered gradin.com for the first time – it was a standard 2-year registration and cost me $70.00 (I think my last registration was $8.95 for a year). I was finally able to access my awesome Mindspring account web space using my rocking X2 US Robotics Sportster (externel) modem via www.gradin.com. I was working in Allaire’s Cold Fusion, though I couldn’t afford a license for the server to host my own site using their technology. I used Allaire’s Homesite as my primary editor with Photoshop and Fractal Painter as my graphics packages. I think I was trying to get onto Bellsouth’s xDSL beta program, but with no luck due to my distance from the carrier. I was, however, involved with Wachovia’s beta online account access. It was a glorified BBS – awesome!

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today? I’ve got ESX hosts to convert to 3.5i, installable. SAN storage to attach, and VMs to migrate both through traditional migrations, as well as the new and improved Storage VMotion. I also have some process proposal documentation to get done for the collected efforts of the Norcross lab engineering team, as well as that of our Hillsboro office. I hope to get some ping-pong in at lunch, ride my bike 10 miles back to my car, and then facilitate a drum circle for 100 people in northeast Georgia with some friends.

3. Snacks I enjoy: Have you tried my nuts? They’re salty and dimensionally variant. I enjoy the texture especially, though others are just happy I am able to share – there’s more than enough for everyone to enjoy! I also like beef jerky and granola bars.

4. Places I’ve lived: I’ve had a good spread in my life, though as of late my homestead has been very static. I began in Ocean Springs, MI; moved to Plano, TX, and then jumped to San Diego, CA shortly thereafter. We moved a couple of times there, but finally moved out the state to Tuscon, AZ. From there, we departed for Waycross, GA, and then onto Gainesville, GA where I live now. I’ve moved several times throughout both of these places in Georgia, and I’ve been here the longest amount of time so far.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: This is actually the title of a post I’ve been working on for a while now. It’s a recurring theme throughout our decade+ of marriage, and one that will most likely continue to develop and mature in time. The most boring thing I think of from our list is to pay-off debt and acquire some commercial real estate to lease. There’s money accumulation prospects in that, so we would do well to set ourselves for the inevitable loss of said billions through the frivolous purchases from our list. There are two more intriguing opportunities: 1) Develop a waterfront district on Lake Lanier – a boardwalk with shops and dining – that aids in the lake’s restoration efforts, as well as providing some awareness about the lake’s ecosystem. 2) Convert an old mill on the outskirts of town into a turn-of-the-century arts and crafts guild. History tells us that these guilds are mere congregations of passionate people in the arts and crafts and generally have no ability to sustain themselves financially.

5 “Tagged”

Awareness Training from the Gov

Olaf — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:16:33 +0000

If you’ve become a radiation mutant with a deformed hand, remember to close the window. No one wants to see that shit.

The U.S. government wants to teach its citizens about the threats and remediation measures necessary during a terrorist attack. To do so, they’re built Ready.gov to help out the American people. I can dig it, and besides the fact that most of the real meat of the site is obscured within downloadable PDF documents, the site looks pretty nice. A friend of mine, Amanda, delivered to me a “farkin’ hilarious” joke regarding this site. I investigated briefly and found no evidence of the truth in a relationship between the contents of the joke and the actual site. Maybe it was a previous attempt or maybe it was just a blatant attempt to fabricate a joke with believable basis that no one would actually check out the story. Either way, I don’t really care because the joke is farkin’ hilarious. If you’re not familiar with Darren’s Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness, you should fast become aware if you like this humor. In looking around at the Ready.gov site, I found the peculiarity of the Kids’ area kind of funny. The whole Mountain Lion family thing is just funny to me. Maybe it’s because the mom’s name is Purrcilla when we all new it should have been Cheetara.

**UPDATE:
I did eventually find the pictures used in this joke. They’re obscured within various PDF’s regarding America’s visual guides to biological, chemical, and other threats. It’s perhaps even funnier to see them used officially, because all you can think of is the humorous context.