Berg

Fluff post...brought to you by my protest against having to work today

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:01:16 GMT

Quoth one of my co-workers at a meeting this morning with some product reps: "Yeah, I ran miso on a .4 poisson and got some really high stress razors." Ummm...ok, what? I guess I should learn some more of the lingo surrounding the engineering work we do around here, as I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about having a painful nervous system reaction to 4/10 of a fish bathed in a fermented soy product.

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:13:17 GMT

Ok, I suppose I'm due for an update...it's been, what, 7 months? My lurkin' shoes are wore out.

It's been an eventful half-year. Riley's now a 17-pound chunk, eating solid food and pulling himself up to stand. Still arguably the best-looking baby on the planet. Note to self: post new pictures on Flickr. We've ventured out across the country twice this fall, first up to Alfred, Maine for our annual Boston couples group reunion, and then to Minnesota to visit grandparents and various other relatives for Thanksgiving (and Riley's first snow!). Discovered that Riley's a pretty good flier, cranking out considerably less noise while on board than his co-passenger peers. We also bought a house! Closed on it just before the Thanksgiving trip and moved in over the week following. It's nothing overly extravagant, though much more space than we've had before; it's a 2100 sq. ft., 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch on the north side of town.

And that's really about it! Life with a small child can get rather inwardly-focused, especially for me as I lean that direction anyway, but I think we're gradually reversing that trend. The holiday season should help, given the sheer volume of social events in the upcoming weeks.

Thu, 10 May 2007 00:57:45 GMT

Ah, I knew I was forgetting something...sorry for leaving any of you folks who still read this hanging. Riley James arrived at 7:27 a.m., weighing in at 7lbs 10oz and measuring 20 inches long. He and Brooke are both doing great.

Now for the important part...the pictures!

Wed, 09 May 2007 03:56:30 GMT

Riley arrival countdown: T-minus 8 hours, 30 minutes.

Crazy.

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:45:48 GMT

Wow, Google is a little scary sometimes...I was starting up Firefox this morning, my first intention being to get some details on WiMax to see if it would potentially be usable for this project we've got going on in West Africa, so up pops Gmail (amongst the barrage of the 40-odd tabs in my perpetually saved session), and the random web clip headline is "WiMAX to Go Live in Warwick". Definitely a little disconcerting. Note to self: remember your tinfoil hat tomorrow.

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 01:43:28 GMT

Ok, time for my more-or-less monthly update, before March slips away from me. We've been crazy busy, but despite that, everything's been going pretty well. Brooke's in good health and spirits, and Riley's growing like crazy; it looks like he's about a week ahead of the curve, size-wise.

For my part, I'm having a rather grown-up-feeling time of things lately, due in large part to the reality of impending parenthood, as driven home by the childbirth class we've been attending. Augmenting that entirely sufficient factor, the past week's events have added to the prevailing sense of responsibility and age. I kicked off the week with an event that has been almost a decade in the making; that's right, I'm finally a fully licensed driver. Having finally gone through with it, I'm definitely feeling a bit idiotic for not getting it over with earlier. Though honestly, the real issue has been the combination of my being very much not a morning person and the Texas DPS's obnoxious road test scheduling policy (which requires, for the uninformed, showing up at "the crack of a sparrow's fart," as my colorful British colleague so delicately put it). Factor 2 came yesterday, when my boss and I finally found some time to get sit down and hash out the current situation, which resulted in my being promoted out of contract status to full-time employee. It's really mostly an on-paper sort of change, though it actually amounts to a significant raise in that we don't have to pay that dang self-employment tax next year! And factor 3 is the fact that tomorrow morning, we're becoming godparents to the daughter of one of our friends here.

Despite all this, I find myself not infrequently up 'til 2am hunting the fiends of Ivalice and trying to snag just a few more points in my career as a tennis pro. How the heck did I get to be an adult?

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:15:16 GMT

Man, this post is way overdue. What has it been, a month or so? Crazy. As I mentioned before, we have a name...Riley James Nyberg should be arriving sometime in mid-May. It's funny how the naming thing seems to work; we had pretty much been set on deciding between two other names for months before we ran across Riley in a book from some friends. He's already got a nickname from his grandfather...Riley Fuzzle (evidently there's a Riley Fuzzle Rd. on the way out to the hunting lease). Probably fairly apt, if he has his dad's Sting-esque fluff of hair at birth.

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 04:34:02 GMT

Greetings from
Viscount Andrew the Kind of Fishbourne Sneething
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

So, I've been feeling the need to post for awhile now, it's just been so crazy lately. Pretty much all good stuff, but not much exciting or out of the ordinary, just seasonal programming. Brooke, or should I say, Her Exalted Highness Duchess Brooke the Undefeated of Lower Slaughter, is still doing well, and is definitely showing now. She's psyched about having blown past the point of just looking kinda fat to looking definitively pregnant...her words, not mine, I should most definitely note. Oh, and on that front...the ultrasound results are in, and it's a boy! I, of course, fell prey to the stereotypical ultrasound misreading blunder...you know, "Holy crap, look at the size of his...oh wait, that's his leg." Any way, crazy stuff. I'm...not quite sure what to do with a little boy. I think I need more power tools or something. But not to worry! I'm rapidly amassing a pile of guides and manuals that claim to be able to get both myself and my child through the trials of early childhood alive, if not entirely sane.

We've actually already got a name picked out, and strider_corinth, if you're reading this, it's not that one...nope, not that one either. I promise to let you all know as soon as my family does, just doesn't feel right otherwise.

A new beginning...

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:51:58 GMT

So, while I've been enjoying the endless diversions of the Wii, I've been relishing even more this bit of news that I've been hoarding away...ok, I'm going to stop erasing cheesy euphemisms and come right out and tell you that Brooke is pregnant!

We're a couple of weeks out of the first trimester, so we're feeling pretty confident about this one. The estimated due date is May 23rd. We might even find out the gender next week! Anyway, too excited and hungry to go on. More later, perhaps.

Insert insipid Wii joke here

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 09:12:03 GMT

Inspired by vinelander's tale, I shall now regale you with a Wii tale of my own!

I should preface by saying that the haul from my recent birthday consisted mainly of cash earmarked for a Wii purchase, so I had significant hopes for a successful transaction. Never having braved a console launch before, I spent an inordinate amount of time comparing theoretical stock numbers, checking message boards to gauge the prospective plans of others, and generally just obsessing about the whole thing. I found quickly that we had one of the midnight lauch Toys R Us stores not far from us, so strider_corinth and I decided to swing by mid-afternoon on Saturday to check on the line. Looked like about 30-ish folks. A quick word with one of the employees revealed that they had 100 units for launch night, so we decided to forego the safe bet in favor of not sitting in line for 8 to 10 hours.

We returned around 9:30 to find a significantly longer line, and estimated we were in the mid-80s somewhere. Felt pretty good until a manager came by and counted off around 10:15 - we were number 112. Oops. Thankfully, some employees came back around shortly and let us know they actually 168 units in stock, so we were well in the clear. The line moved along pretty well once the hour arrived, and we were in possession and on our way home by 1:30. Got back around 2:00, rabidly re-wired the entertainment center, and dug in. Crashed around 4:30, after the third utterly humiliating round of golf finally broke us.

My impressions thus far:

Wii Sports: Far more than I hoped for from a bundled launch title. Tennis and boxing are gold, and bowling's pretty good, with golf slightly less so and the incomplete-feeling baseball a distant fifth.

Twilight Princess: Haven't spent too much time with it, so no real conclusions yet, but it's definitely pretty! Oh, and beating chickens has never been more fun.

A final note before crashing: strider_corinth's Mii avatar bears an uncanny resemblance to his actual appearance. It kinda creeped me out at first, but it's sort of warm and fuzzy knowing there's a little strider_corinth running around in my console.

Adventures in International Couriering

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:55:28 GMT

Whew, back from Norway/Amsterdam and mostly back on US Central Time...that was some trip. Getting there was fraught with headaches, both figurative and literal. For starters, the car that was supposedly arranged to take me to the airport was apparrently never confirmed, so I ended up in a cab 45 minutes after I was supposed to have left. Which ended up being pretty irrelevant, as my first flight was delayed three hours due to having been struck by lightning on takeoff in Amsterdam. So I got to hang out in the business lounge with free drinks and stuff, and try not to stress about missing my connection. Unfortunately, the free drinks combined with the red wine I had with dinner on the plane got me a bit dehydrated, so I wound up with a nasty headache and didn't manage to sleep more than a couple of hours on the overnight flight. I got to Amsterdam around 10 A.M., dealt with flight changes, crashed for a few on a really nice leather couch in an airport waiting area, and caugh my flight to Oslo.

In Oslo, I made the mistake of trying to actually be honest about the fact that I was carrying commercial equipment into the country, where I could have just walked through the "no declarations" door and been fine, so I had to go through two more hours of rushing back and forth between customs and shipping agents to get the appropriate paperwork. That finally dealt with, I caught the two hour train to Kongsberg, ate an obscenely expensive dinner of shrimp the size of my fist in the hotel restaurant, and crashed.

I ended up spending an extra day in Norway, mostly to make sure that the equipment made it out of customs and to the engineering facility in one piece, then headed back to Amsterdam. The extra day in Norway allowed me to make my Amsterdam flight earlier in order to actually spend a little amount of time in the city. Unfortunately, I still didn't get in until late afternoon, by which time all the museums were closed, so I pretty much just wandered around, grabbed some food, and hopped on a boat tour. Oh, and bought some clothes, as my bags had for some reason been checked through to Houston, even though I was spending a night between flights. Most annoying.

The flight home yesterday was pretty much the ideal transatlantic flight in my book. No annoying headaches or discomfort, great food, a decent amount of elbow room, and plenty of time to do whatever the heck I feel like. I managed to finish my book (about half of the very dense 600 pages of Foucault's Pendulum) and blow through half of the first season of Battlestar Galactica, which is definitely my new obsession. The driver was actually there to pick me up this time, and got me home without incident. Brooke managed to poke me enough to keep me awake until 10:00 despite my 7 hour internal time delay, after which I crashed for 10 hours, and here I am at work again, feeling like a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond.

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 04:59:30 GMT

So, my job is rapidly turning into a launching pad for international experiences. There's a part that needs to get to Norway ASAP, and apparently with more care than shipping companies have exhibited on previous attempts, so I get to hand deliver it via first-class transatlantic air. On two days notice. The cost has to be obscene (edit: yep, it's obscene...for some reason they sent me an itinerary with the cost of the flights on it), but I'm certainly not complaining. I get to ride out my first trip to Europe in first class, on someone else's dime, and with overtime pay!

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:16:47 GMT

Wow, I think the last couple weeks have seen at least a dozen abandoned posts from me. This very post was narrowly snatched from the jaws of abandonment...twice!

Anyway, life continues, feeling more like a slowly widening spiral than much of path that's leading anywhere right now. Even circumstances around me seem to follow some sort of orbital period; for instance, our houseguests may be returning, having had the rug pulled out from under them in their housing situation. People who value money over friendship, or basic human decency for that matter, really piss me off, but that's a subject for another day. Too much gloom from the drippy mess overhanging the city today. Or yesterday, really, since now it's tomorrow. Er, yesterday's tomorrow. Whatever.

But to get to the original point of this post...we're coming to Boston! Yay! It'll be a lamentably brief trip, but at least we're making it...it was beginning to look like it wasn't going to happen this summer. The three of us (oh yeah, Keesh is coming too) will be arriving this Thursday and departing next Tuesday. Hope to see all you Boston-area folks over the course of our visit!

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 06:41:33 GMT

Oy, where to begin....too much to recap. For now, random bits:

Headed to San Antonio tomorrow for a little getaway. We've had a friend of ours and her two boys (2 and 5 years old) staying with us for the past 3 weeks while they transitioned out of a messy home situation, so it's been a bit crazy around here. It'll be nice to get away for a couple days now that they're on slightly more stable ground.

Worked a wedding at the church tonight. We got a multi-camera setup in the sanctuary and nice little control studio when they remodeled, courtesy of some crazy rich parishoners who want us to record the service each week while they're out of the country for a couple of years, and as a result we also do wedding videos. It went off pretty well, though the couple didn't seem to be in the moment. Kinda sad, really. I think the bride smiled all of two times. Still, it was a paid gig, and it's got to be some of the easiest money ever.

Started reading G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. My dad was a huge Chesterton fan, and so far our tastes have proved very similar, so I figured it was time to give it a shot. Thus far, I'm not disappointed. I'm still hoping to get through Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain at some point, but I'm bailing on it for the moment...just a bit too dense for where I'm at currently. Gradually working my way back there.

Dreams...

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 19:31:48 GMT

Last night's adventures, in no particular order:

- Brooke and I, and our two cats, were holed up in a sort of mother-in-law apartment with owners of the adjoining house. We were preparing for the imminent arrival of two panthers, who the couple raised, and who had recently succombed to their natural tendency to eat everything that moves. Everything was rapidly torn off the walls and used to make impromptu barricades. The antlers of several deer were mysteriously produced, and bound to various objects in hopes of skewering the predators. It was no use though; they broke through easily into the room, and went for the cats first. They then managed to circumvent all the other obstacles we had created by warping the boundaries of the floor and walls, allowing them to get at us from virually any angle. I managed to escape as one was tearing its way through the matress of the bed from underneath.

- I was sent on some sort of generic mission to the past to "fix stuff." The past apparently consisted of a blighted wheat field with an unexplicably barricaded road to a rusty old warehouse/barn. My partner was brought in by helicopter while I was checking out the barn, but the pilot forgot to stop while she was being lowered, so she ended up crushed, wrapped around the barricade by her harness wire. This constituted a complete mission failure, and a jump team appeared immediately to bring me back. However, the day was doomed to utter failure, and I ended up in some dystopian future, in a filthy alley of a floating city. The jump team and I amused ourselves for a short while with these little square white push-button LED lights built into the cement walls seemingly at random, then decided we needed to press on. We split up, and I found my way to the city's memory array, which was something like a giant, circular knife-block with flimsy plastic grating covering its face. I quickly discovered that pressing on the grate could disrupt different areas of the city, which could be determined via the handy miniaturized cut-away of the city located nearby, complete with miniatures of all the city's inhabitants moving about in real-time. Noticing an older version of my wife and me in the model, I was taken immediately to their location, where some weird symbolic thing happened with my wife's spirit emerging from my forehead and an ensuing newlywed-game/pictionary hybrid with etchings on stone tablets. Ultimately, it ended up getting me back to the right time.

Job musings

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:29:29 GMT

Job interview this morning. Wish I could say I felt like it went well, but it definitely fell into the category of ok. I'm one of six up for the job, and second-round interviews should be called back next week. I guess we'll see...I don't honestly even know if I want it. The stability would be nice, but I'm not sure it's any closer to something I actually want to do. Not that I've ever had much of a career path in mind, but somehow I always manage to feel that I'm veering off-course. Wish I knew what that course was...is it just a perpetual grass-is-greener mentality, or should I actually be doing something else? Ah well. I don't expect to have any answers there anytime soon. One thing I do know is that I need a job where I actually have a job to do; you'd think that would be implied, but I've spent 90% of my work time this past week waiting for projects to crop up, and it's starting to drive me crazy.

Random musings upon the first funk of '06

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:15:08 GMT

Strange dreams in the 4 hours that poorly substituted for last night's rest. Late dinners always seem to do that to me. Don't remember much, except that they involved this archetypal house that has been appearing in my dreams for years, and that just before I woke up, I was walking around in my half-sunken basement eating a Mr. Goodbar and trying to find a key to the locks on all the vending machines that the school district had left there.

Life of late has been doldrums on the surface, with writhing, whirling turbulence hidden just beneath. Work has been drudgery, a slog through meaningless tasks and time-wasting until the weekly moment when I'm actually sort of useful here. Time with Brooke has been spent in errands, chores, and financial wranglings. Personal time has been frittered away, unproductive and unsatisfying. Ah! Here's the funk I've been resisting. Better to just ride it out anyway.

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:36:33 GMT

No posts for almost a month! Must fight the inertia!

I'm on my second listen-through of Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, and it's rapidly winning me over to that dangerous place where I just can't stop listening. He's got a Michigan album and another one called Seven Swans, which I must obtain posthaste. Just read an interview with him in which he talks about his take on christian music and how his faith as an episcopalian informs his music, which took me by surprise. The fact that he's been involved with the Danielson Famile also surpised me, as I wouldn't have thought anyone inhabiting their strange little world could maintain normal cognitive processes, much less create something this brilliant and evocative. No offense intended to anyone, but those guys are strange beyond my ability to appreciate.

Anyway, yay for finding good new music!

Moving update

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 17:24:21 GMT

So in update to my post of a week ago today...we have a new place! We went all-out (well, as all-out as our price range allowed) and opted for the one bedroom + study, as it offered far more light, space, locational bonuses, and was a better deal per sq. ft. to boot. We're moving on Monday, at last! I am unspeakably relieved to be getting out of my in-laws' house, though somewhat sad to fill that gloriously empty, open space with our stuff.

A dreaming time

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:25:55 GMT

Wow, lots of dream posts this morn. As usual, I couldn't retain most of mine, but here's what left:

I was on a trip to see some family, which involved flying to Chicago to drive to Minnesota (which was actually Maine, but I digress). Picked up the rental car on my way out of the airport and took off. Chicago was the shining ubercity of most of my traveling dreams, gleaming softly amidst crystal streams and tree-lined embankments. Stopped at gas station/convenience store on the way out of town, and randomly met up with melody_joy and a guy who was supposedly Z, though there was apparently something wrong with his hair, which caused someone to question his identity. Turns out our meeting wasn't actually random, as she was riding to Minnesota/Maine with me. The trip was a blur of open road and a strong sense of excellent companionship. I met up with family for dinner, then apparently had to immediately head back to catch my return flight. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I panicked as I realized that I could no longer legally drive, as I was now alone in the car. In a blazing moment of revelation, I transcended fear and doubt, gunned the engine, and drove off into the sunset.

Dang, I really need to dig my social security card out of storage, take the stupid test, and get a full-fledged license. I guess that'll be much more possible once we move and can much more easily sift through what's currently crammed into a 10'x15' storage unit, but I'm so tired of waiting. Gragh! Note to self: don't ever move without that stuff in your personal posession again!

Decisions, decisions

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:48:01 GMT

We've been looking at apartments the last few afternoons, and we've pretty much narrowed things down to two really great ones we saw yesterday. Everything we've seen has been nice, but these were just above and beyond. Now the dilemma is this: do we go for simplicity with the one bedroom, and hope whatever doesn't fit there (double bed, dresser, storage boxes) fits in Brooke's parents' storage, or do we go up $150/month and take the one bedroom + study + tons of storage and achieve a fuller degree of independence from Brooke's parents? Thankfully, there's not a bad choice to be made here, and the complex will let you change your mind about your floorplan (or your choice to rent there, for that matter) in the first 30 days. If all goes well, we should have a new address by the end of the day!

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:49:50 GMT

There is something that I have found to be true about my life in the past few years that I am extremely thankful for, and that is this: drama just can't seem to survive for more than a couple of hours, max. I was on my way out of my funk by the time I finished the last post and thinking about how to convince Brooke that a quick change of venue to a short-term apartment was the best plan, and Brooke called me within the hour to ask me to lunch and propose that exact course of action (which, I should note, was never previously discussed). So, drama averted for now...we ended up extending our lunch breaks to take a look at place, which is perfectly located, very well amenitied, pretty nice-looking, and available as soon as we want it, but a touch on the small side. We're leaning toward just going for it, but I guess we'll see what tonight brings...

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 17:58:15 GMT

Ugh, I hate being in the doghouse. So claustrophobic, and there's always the panic - sometimes momentary, sometimes extended - that I can't seem to remember how to get out. The house of my in-laws is rapidly becoming a bastion of despair, and I've pretty much flushed most of my hopes for this holiday season down the hole. We've lost most any hope or desire for working with Apartment Life after, for the umpteenth time, they've assured us that they're really pursuing getting our situation resolved and will be in touch within 24 hours, and then utterly failed to contact us or respond to any form of communication for over a week (and counting...). We spent the better part of Saturday dashing around town looking at houses and townhouses in a manic fit of ecstatic energy, all of which came crashing down to reality last night when we realized that, even in the best case of finding the right place and being able to secure funds in our semi-precarious situation, we'd be about a month and a half out from being able to move in. Going back to renting seems like a pointless, dead-end waste when the possibility of buying seems so imminent, and the thought of throwing another short-term move in there induces little less despair.

I'm feeling the guilt of letting things go this long without real evaluation, of denial, even as I know I still haven't accepted the whole situation. I'm feeling the guilt of letting my wife down, both in failing to find a "normal", permanent job, and in failing to support her in her frustration and anxiety. Most of all, I'm feeling the frustration of having let the responsibilities and decisions of life slip away from me again.

Ah, if you'll excuse me, I believe the door has presented itself once again.

Dream from 11/31, belatedly posted

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 00:16:29 GMT

I was a member of a group invited to the island home of some insanely rich guy. Our task was to judge whether he was deserving of his riches, and if not, to kill him without letting him know what was coming. I refused to take part and mostly tried to stay out of the way, but ended up witnessing the final decision of undeservingness, and the subsequent demise of our host by way of a man with a shotgun on a floating platform outside the window. Once that was over with, I continued my exploration of the house. On the topmost floor, I came across a room that was a complete shambles; the roof had caved in, and the floor was knee-deep in dirt and structural debris. As I looked on, a section of dirt rose up, and out of it crawled a giant stick-insect. Just as I realized that I was looking down on it from a great height, and that it was actually a monstrously huge, alien-headed snake-ish creature, it seethed up the side of the pit and wrapped itself around me. I grappled with it for a few moments, and ultimately managed to get it immobilized, at which point I dragged it into a nearby bathroom where some of the other folks in the house were waiting. As I dropped it on the tile floor, its skin began to disintegrate, and a baby emerged from within. This made everyone very happy, until the baby started offering strange and disturbing insights into the lives of the people in the room. I woke up before he got to mine.

Snippets of weekend

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:36:23 GMT

Thanksgiving was spent with Brooke's family out in Middle Suburbia, an excellent spread of which turkey was by far the least. Not that I have anything against turkey, mind you...we pretty much camped out there all day and well into the evening, watching the small ones cycle through stages of tiredness and commiserating with Brooke's married cousin who is also living at home for the time being.

Friday. Work. Blah. Quite productive, though. After work, our weekly visit with Emily & Jared, excellent as always. Frozen hot chocolate, Lord of the Beans, and Noah, the most content, undemanding 9-month-old ever. I do believe cloning is in order.

Saturday. A day of unparalleled relaxation. Slept in, caught up on Everwood and our guilty pleasure, the WB's Supernatural. Caught a mid-afternoon showing of Pride and Prejudice, a pearl of incandescence which is still rolling around my mind. To top off the day, a steak dinner, several glasses of wine, and two-and-a-half ages of RealMyst with Brooke.

Sunday. Slept in again and caught the late service. Excellent sushi lunch with Mom and Keesh. Finished off RealMyst with Brooke (yay for getting to see Rime!). Read for a while, had dinner, then started up Riven (after a few hiccups) at Brooke's request. Hope it doesn't scare her off...