Horse therapy

I rode Sadie with L on Lady on Thursday.    Got off and led Ms Sadie through a nice big shallow mud puddle.   She is so funny.  All scared to step in water but then she starts pawing and playing and is in no hurry to step out.    Later we rode across the irrigation ditch at a point where there was no puddled water in the bottom.   L has really learned and she held Lady up.  Sadie rushed through and up the opposite bank but it was not as dramatic as if Lady had done so and gotten far ahead of her first.   I let Sadie rush rather than start a battle that I might lose over asking her to stop and relax.  

The riding is keeping me sane I think.   My horse board that I get annoyed with but never to the point of quitting it altogether is annoying at the moment.   I should at least only stay on the horse page but then I think I don't want to skip wishing happy b-day and so on so I always go to the general life page and even when I skip the threads some of the titles and intro sentences one can see w/o clicking through annoy me royally.   

Have to go through pics and video for mom's memorial.  I think we will do a picture board and have a dvd with some clips from VHS tapes and some stills that we don't use on the picture board but we haven't mapped things out.   Not sure what to think for memorial in ND.   I don't know that dad finalized it but we are thinking Oct 21 for CO memorial.   Thanksgiving is Nov 22 and with my travel for work the end of Oct and then hunting season the first 2 weekends in Nov + the week between it seems like it would be hard to fit it in before Thanksgiving, but maybe we could just as well do it that weekend or the last weekend in Nov.  

I'll leave that call to dad and sis.   I kind of pushed that we might have to wait till spring but that does become quite a long wait.   Brothers wife offered that maybe they could come out for thanksgiving or xmas.  I don't really care to have them do that, don't need any physical stress on pregnant SIL and,  thinking maybe we could fly there instead.   or Maybe I can plan to do the Death Valley Endurance ride between Xmas and NYD and then we could visit them if I found a place to 'board' the horses for a few days before or after the ride.  Except I don't like to tow in winter.  

Kind of think I should go there and see if I can find a used car to buy for them.   They were leasing and can't afford to continue the lease I guess.    Would not shock me if SIL was one of the Jerry Brown votes that tipped Calif. into full on financial doom so I have to overcome the "well thats what you get" instinct.  I have not really talked to her about politics/philosophy just seems like she is probably socialist christian type.   

I never said I was bored, never

I don't want interesting times at work.   Do. not. want.   But it appears our Sys Admin resigned saturday night with a cryptic email.   I thought it was a joke and he was just burned out for the weekend but I sent an email to the group alias yesterday evening and got an automated message that his address is not active, which suggests he took it off working remotely from home.   My earlier email to the group alias did not generate any bounce messages.

I know I was one of the stresses on him lately rather than a relief valve and I feel badly but I'm sure that could only be a tiny fraction of what made him 'snap' to decide in the middle of a weekend to quit.
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addendum:   Well the office seems to think that sys admin just needs some time and will come back.  IOW seems to be in complete denial that they need to get their shit together to hire someone  --which needs to be done anyway as we have been having to wait too long for updates that the sys admin has to do for months now and obviously we need to lighten the load ASAP if we want to keep our current guy if he only takes a week or so to de-stress and then comes back.  --which we do,  we don't have catastrophic failures cuz he is excellent about keeping up backups and so on and not jumping on bandwagon of the newest thing before doing research and making sure its not going to be a tarbaby.  My bleeding OS whine was the exception and I think the software engineer who out ranks pushed that upgrade although I don't know the details.  


Sys Admin has been supporting a large # of computers with 3 different major O/S types: microsoft, & apple desktops and CentOS for the workhorse rack CPUs so its not at all that he just doesn't GitRdone efficiently.    I hate the breezy liberal attitude, seems like they think that of course he'll come back and find a way to keep things running and the software folks can fill in for a week or 2.  Except that the one that would be more competent for stringing hardware I think is Taiwanese and we have ITAR issues so he can't go in the main cpu rack rooms and may only have fairly broad sudo permissions but not full root access but I don't know the details.   

Struggling to get back to normal

I needed to get back to work, not because they have any pressure on me but to keep some normalcy.   I thought I would just work a normal week but I am really dragging today so I may have to work some partial days and take PTO to get through this first week. 

I did ride Shade on Saturday and Sadie on Sunday.   They truly were sanity rides.  Just over and under 3 miles on them but much needed to force me to focus on the horse for part of an hour and enjoy them. 

Otherwise mostly spent Friday-Sunday going through old pictures and a few videos for memorial.   Some good memories but its also been mentally wearing, much more so than I had expected it to be.  I hope dad is nearly done with phoning folks to let them know what happened or does it when I'm out of the house.  I think it must be therapeutic for him going over the details for folks but I can barely stand to hear it again.   Not much farther to fingernails on a blackboard effect for me. 

It is so nice not having to deal with a funeral home right now.  I think I will sign up with the science outfit as well but I will specify that I only want the option with family getting cremated remains in 3-5 weeks and then I want them to scatter the ashes in some riding area;  only if I outlive my family and there is no one to scatter ashes then the longer term science experiments is ok.   If the science place rejects for short term research there should be money in my estate to pay for cremation and the survivors will just have to deal with it.  

Mom died Thursday

She collapsed Tuesday around 12:30 and basically died then, but dad called 911 and the paramedics got her heart going again.   The ICU Dr. on Tuesday night wanted us to withdraw her from the ER ventilator but since she was already on the machines we said we would not until we called my brother and sister and would let them decide if they wanted to come and see her even though she was unresponsive.

So they induced hypothermia for 18 hours and then did an EEG on thursday that confirmed there was no brain wave activity.    So after a few hours delay for the organ donor folks to evaluate and decide none of the organs or even the tissue donation would work we pulled her off the ventilator Thursday evening and her heart quit beating within a few minutes.    My brother and his wife and stepson flew back to Calif. Friday.   The MIL just had lung cancer discovered and part of a lung removed and is in a rebab nursing home.  

Mom had pre-registered to donate her body to science through a group called science care.   During the evaluation when we called them they wanted to know if we wanted option two, which we had not heard of.   They do longer term research and we will not get cremated remains back in 3-5 weeks as we would have with the other option.   I don't know if mom knew about this option but we chose it.    I thought it increased chances they would accept her and Dad thought she would have wanted to contribute as much as possible to research.  Sis recalled that mom had said she wanted her body donated to science and didn't care what we did with the remains afterward so she was also onboard with that decision.  

So we are just going through video and pictures, picking things out to do a picture board and dvd for a memorial service and do not have a definite marker for when we should time that.  

Enough philosophy and politics. Horse post

I rode Sadie friday with L and Lady, not a great ride but no flame out. She got rattled and wanted to bolt away from a dog that came running up to its fence and acted tough. I made this worse cuz I was thinking yeah I am glad this dog is on the other side of the fence and then Ole came up to 'help' and I'm bellering at Ole to "COME" illogically thinking he might wind the other dog up where it was might tear through the fence.

But just a bit of crow-hopping and bouncy energy the rest of the ride home from Sadie; not an actual blow up so good job for a greenie and I get a pass on not reacting in the best way Still I did not want to end the ride on the note of Sadie rushing home, even if it was prancing and not bolting so we did 15 minutes in the little arena before I untacked and put her away.

 Sunday I rode Sadie by herself. She was pretty good, I didn't feel like I wanted to ask her to canter JIC, but other than one 180 which I turned into a 360 and "oh yes we are going this way and not just short-cutting home" with a strong leg she was pretty good. I usually prefer not to make a fuss with my ayrabs if they spook. Sometimes I will pull their nose around for a short 'time out', especially if it feels like they are looking for a bogey monster. Just seems like with them its too easy to start feeding them negative energy and make them more likely to act silly/spooky the rest of the ride if I don't keep my reactions pretty low key.

 Today L came out and I grabbed Shade so she wouldn't have to babysit me, being ready to pull Lady up if Sadie was getting anxious and couldn't deal with Lady getting too far ahead etc. That was fun. I let Shade outrun Lady up the cantering hill, I've gotten more comfortable that Lady isn't going to get crazy if I actually let Shade go in front. Did slow down at the top and let Lady gait on ahead. Her and Shade seem to have some rivalry going. Shade is often happy to let Lady be in front at the start and past the "ooh scary brush" bits and I used to always hold her back for the fast canter up the hill so the rivalry has been reinforced especially in Lady's mind.

Why are we updating to a bleeding edge OS version?

In install and patch process on IO-A I noticed there were 7 new patches 
in the last several days. I updated:

Downloading Packages:
(1/7): ghostscript-8.70-14.el6_3.1.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                       
(2/7): libexif-0.6.21-5.el6_3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                            
(3/7): python-2.6.6-29.el6_3.3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                           
(4/7): python-devel-2.6.6-29.el6_3.3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                     
(5/7): python-libs-2.6.6-29.el6_3.3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                      
(6/7): selinux-policy-3.7.19-155.el6_3.4.noarch.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                 
(7/7): selinux-policy-targeted-3.7.19-155.el6_3.4.noarch.rpm 

As an operator I've gotten to deal with lots of failures to get data on our data collection computer the last two days because things were breaking.  I can't begin to debug half of it because one has to be root to even read the config files.  I am not a root user nor should I be with my cowboy style, I do know the main sys admin and also the two software users with root permissions doing some of the high level stuff have been nearly tearing their hair out trying to get things working for the fancy I/O cpu's with this new OS.  

If I were the boss I'd be asking why in hell we decided to switch to the very latest OS before they even had the bugs worked out?   I think that the new OS  supposedly solves some slow data transfer issues but honestly with hindsight we certainly should have lived with the slow transfers a while longer while the "new and improved" OS got its bugs worked out and we absolutely should not have got in such a rush to push through the update on the coupled I/O CPUs when it became apparent last week that it was a bear trying to make things work under the new OS.  As far as I can tell everything was working perfectly fine with the processing CPUs using the new OS and the I/Os having the old so why not abort *upgrading* the I/Os for a few weeks? 

Blogging this to try to take my mind off the fact that people still support the JEF and apparently give quite a bit of credence to the MarxSpewMedia.   My dad enjoys watching the History channel science fantasy bits about how earth must surely be a lab experiment of advanced aliens.  They have evidence of societies from past millenniums having some pretty advanced technologies; then those societies disappear/are replaced by groups that are pretty much functioning just at hunter/gatherer level.  I don't believe in the alien fantasy and its scary to think how many times humankind has advanced to a high level and then self destructed.   

Oh the banks are responsible for our crappy economy?    Well they largely are, since they helped Obumbles get elected in 2008.   But I don't think the over educated idiot I just overheard meant it in that way.   Give me a freaking break.   If an over powerful government was not strangling businesses with a bunch of nonsense regulations could banks prevent growth right now?  

Hell No --- folks are getting 0.72 percent interest on CDs.   They would be happy to invest in businesses and get better returns if they felt the business had a decent chance to succeed versus getting way less than the *REAL* rate of inflation on their savings. 

  I don't understand how people can fail to see that if we get rid of Barky and give businesses a chance to grow we *might* gain enough time to get the freaking entitlements under control before we follow Zimbabwe, Argentina, 1920's Germany et al down the path of ruinous inflation.  Otherwise folks dependent on government  checks are going to be begging in the streets and probably not getting much sympathy from the folks whose life savings vanished.   The elderly or otherwise disabled from THAT group will be having to beg too in short order and only those with valuable skill sets or productive land that can barter for or grow what they need or demand raises/increased prices on *their* goods on the fly are going to be getting along OK.  

Do people really delude themselves into thinking "oh aliens came in and wiped out all the great civilizations" ?   Really?? --- and more recently the Germans and English tribes were just such awesome fighters that they were able to overrun the Roman Empire -- the crushing amount of bureaucracy and taxes to fund bread and circuses to buy the votes from the poor segment of the population had nothing to do with Rome's collapse?    

So sad to see how many people just delude themselves into thinking things will just continue even while their "democratic" ie mob rule grabbing of the rewards slowly but surely crushes all incentives for the productive to continue producing.  

need moar coffee.

I do hate when I am nodding off sitting at the 'puter monitor.   

Thank goodness for backup to tape drive and disk cleanup.   Nice easy task which can be done w/o full alertness.   I really need to get cracking on more demanding tasks.   Should start something today so I can pick it up tomorrow early rather than starting cold. 

Maybe I should try to give up wheat

I was so stuffy and sleepy yesterday and taking sudafed didn't even help much.   Perhaps my body has decided to react to ragweed but the other difference from the vacation in WY where I felt good was eating more bread.   We had a sammich every day for lunch but otherwise I didn't eat any wheat on the vacation.    I could put up my waffle iron, or just make grind some oats into flour if I want to keep up my waffle indulgence and have oatmeal instead of toast and pbj when I don't have waffle batter.    I suppose I should try.   I get frustrated with mom making no lifestyle changes but just expecting the right drugs will make her all better.   

I felt so out of the loop at work the last two days.   The first meeting day in a month I could not be there is of course when the rest of them actually held a meeting; plus usual post vacation re-adjustment and it was harsh.    Hopefully next week is better.    I have got to dive into some projects I sidelined.  

I need to take advantage of good weather today but would like nothing better than enjoying a good book all day.   Oh well we will have plenty of indoor weather soon enough and the books aren't going anywhere.   

Back from vacation ....

I am too young to retire but sheesh I need to make some changes.   It was so peaceful camping with sis.    Shade completed a 50 mile ride on Saturday.   Felt good to be 'back in the game' a little bit.   Now I'd like to do more this year but the only options are very long drives unless I bail on doing the fun ride near home on Sadie and I do want to get the exposure on her.   Then we went to the bighorns and did some trail-riding.   Rocky trails but otherwise it was pretty nice.   The campground was well-set up and we were able to do loops of 4-5 hours of walking with leisurely lunch breaks which was what we wanted.   We were not looking for 8-9 hour ride days this trip.