SI.com - MLB - Phils' Urbina arrested on attempted murder charges - Tuesday November 8, 2005 11:23AM

SI.com - MLB - Phils' Urbina arrested on attempted murder charges - Tuesday November 8, 2005 11:23AM: According to published reports, last month, Ugueth Urbina and a group of men allegedly wielded machetes at several employees at his family's ranch, and poured gasoline on them in an attempt to set them on fire. Urbina is a former Red Sox reliever. Urbina's lawyer said, "This of course can in some way hurt his career as a professional ballplayer..."

Notes from an area

A couple of times each year, I return to my college for some alumni work. This year, there was a mix-up and the stuff that I was to do didn't happen. Instead, I spent a couple of hours on a college campus, decades after I belong here. It's hard to get a sense of the mood on campus in just a couple of hours. The students seemed earnest, perhaps a bit too much so for a Saturday evening. Upstairs in the campus center, a band was rehearsing, playing old songs such as Piece of My Heart, Dixie Chicken, and Life During Wartime. They weren't very good. The rhythm section was ok, but the singers, one male and one female, each needed at least another half octave of range.

A sign on the southbound side of I-684:

Next Area
13 Miles

The next time that you fail to deliver on expectations at work, you can follow the example of Patrick Byrne, president of Overstock.com. "Q3 was rough. My bad."

The Red Sox will probably recover from the loss of GM Theo Epstein, but not quickly. With so many key players eligible for free agency and Manny being Manny, it'll be a challenge to put a contending team on the field next year. It was dumb to let him get away.

Yesterday on NPR's Morning Edition, Lynn Neary reported on an illustrated edition of Strunk and White's Elements of Style. The samples that I've seen on the NPR site are cute, but don't add to my appreciation of the elegant little original.

Happy 1st birthday, Cassandra.

Nice mask

We're gettting a nice stretch of Indian Summer with blue skies and mild breezes. On Saturday the eastern part of the state picked up as much as three inches of snow while we had none.

This will be a nice evening for trick-or-treaters. We don't get many. The neighborhood has just a few young kids. This year I only bought one (though large) bag of candy so we won't have a lot of leftovers. (We like 'em, but don't need 'em.)

I've long believed that the best way to deal with competitors is to send them new computers. Their productive will go into the tank and stay there for weeks as they get their new systems configured properly. Before my last trip to White Plains, I had to return one laptop that I'd borrowed and take another loaner with me on the trip. When I returned, my new laptop was ready. I'm still adding small programs and setting configurations. I expect that it will be Thanksgiving before I'm done.

I've added some new music to my weekly listening. WAMU, a public radio station in Washington, D.C., has a Sunday morning show called Stained Glass Bluegrass. The sound quality isn't great, sounding muddy like a cheap AM radio, but the music is fine.

Happy Birthday, Jane Pauley.

Test Day

Today is the last day of a week of network management training in White Plains. This afternoon, we'll have a two-hour test, 90 questions on the material we've covered. I've been reviewing my notes during breaks and am reasonably confident that I'll do ok.

Some folks in the class have spent most of their class times reading and writing email, surfing the web to plan their vacations, and shopping. They seem to know know their stuff, so who am I to judge?

The sky is clouding over and it looks like rain for the ride home. There was a frost last night in parts of north central Massachusetts, a late first frost this year. We still don't have much color in the trees, either. An odd season, this.

Happy 14th Birthday, Matt.

Snippets

One of the standard tests of culture is being able to listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of th Lone Ranger. The local classical station has been advertising a production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Naturally, my thoughts go to Bugs Bunny or Alfalfa from The Little Rascals.

The folks in the back room at the National Weather Service get to wax poetic every once in a while. Remarking on the diminished strength of Tropical Storm Vince, they wrote, "As the short happy life of Vince is now over...this will be the last advisory."

Now that the two-month lockout at the CBC has ended, we can keep up with the news about our northern brethren who are trying to gather the potato harvest in the rain.

There's been some good reaction in the tech press to IBM's announcement that it will donate a portion of the Rational Unified Process to the open source Eclipse Foundation.

Apple didn't release an 80GB iPod, as had been rumored, opting for a video iPod instead. Dunno. Maybe there's a market for it, but not with me.

Belief in God may be the result of evolution.

Treating depression in the workplace may make good business sense.

And the rains came

When I left the camp on Sunday, I did what they tell you not to do - drive on a road that's covered with water. A stream had overflowed, covering the road with a half foot of water. It's the first time that I've seen flooding on this stream. This flooding was mild compared to what hit southern New Hampshire, which, in turn, was a flicker compared to Guatemala. And, through it all, the ground stayed firm and steady, unlike Kashmir.

Fortunately, I brought in a supply of wood last week, so we have plenty of dry stuff for the stove. Wood prices are up about 30% this year. Last week I placed an order for green wood that will be dry by late spring if we need it.

It's been said that folks in Boston are not baseball fans; they're Red Sox fans. They're not football fans; they're Patriots fans. And so on. With the Yankees dispatched, I doubt that there will be much interest in the White Sox-Angels series. Maybe this is the year for the White Sox; they're certainly due.

I settled in and got some good work done yesterday, finishing off a tools assignment from my previous job and starting on plans for the upcoming release. The new project cycles between "This is manageable." to "The wheels are coming off and we have three more hills to climb." It's now on the manageable side of the cycle. It was raining mid-day, so Sandra and I walked indoors. Going to all sections of the building, we covered about a mile. Sandra and I sit two aisles apart.

Reports have it that Apple will announce new iPods this week, including a top-of-the-line 80GB beast.

I don't need to look for a job, but I've kept my automated searches running just to see what's out there. So, in my automated search for a technical documentation position, I received a lead on a position as Directory, Stewardship and Foundations for Focus on the Family.

In the late color

A low fog tumbles across the lake, the cold wind skimming over the (relatively) warmer water. You wouldn’t know that the water is warmer by standing it, however. I had some work to do on the boat and was in and out of the water for a half hour or so. Now I’m sitting next to the wood stove, warming and drying.

The rain has let up for a while now. During the night, the wind shifted to the northwest and bringing buckets of rain until early morning. Columbus Day weekend is usually the peak for foliage viewing, but not this year. The color is late and what color we have is dull.

Sandra and Marley are driving back from PEI and will be home this afternoon. It’s a long drive to make in a weekend. The connection to her parents and to the Island is important.

For many people, tomorrow is a holiday, Columbus Day in the States, Thanksgiving in Canada. We’re working, but many people will take the day off because the kids are out of school. Last week, when I was in White Plains, there were many kids around the office. Some schools in the New York area close during Rosh Hashanah.  

After I close up the camp this morning, I’ll go to my father’s house. He left his cane here when he came by here yesterday for coffee. A couple of weeks ago, he slipped while going up the cellar stair at his house. He bumped his shoulder in just the right way and chipped his collarbone. Generally, he’s been doing pretty well these past few months. This latest bump has meant that he hasn’t been able to get the mower deck off his tractor so he can work on the steering. It’s also nearing the time when he will have to get the Jeep ready for winter.

As I go into the third week of my new job, I am enjoying the people but am anxious about the amount of work. I’ve had difficulty concentrating while reading. I have a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday and will talk about it more then. I don’t know if the difficulties are the result of the meds or the condition that the meds are trying to treat. I’ll be in the local office all of this week and then back to White Plains for the next.

In a white room

A quick post from a hotel in White Plains, New York. I'm here for a couple of days of meetings with my new project team. The team is a mix of stand-at-home engineers, testers, and writers and a troupe of traveling consultants and sales people. It's a good group of people.

Downtown White Plains is a dense cluster of tar and concrete. The ride here, about three hours, isn't bad, although I can see how it could jam up quickly in bad weather. I'm glad to be going home this afternoon.

Happy Birthday, Lily. Good luck to Adam, Jennie, and Lily in their new adventure.

Five years

The past five years have given us two presidential elections, the September 11th attacks, the tsunami, Hurricaine Katrina, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. My mother would have found these events fascinating. It would have been heart-rending for her to watch us go to war, but she would have followed the details all the same. She would have been bouyed by the program of peace studies at her alma mater. "I'm planting winter wheat," she'd said of projects that might not be completed in her lifetime.

It's been five years since my mother died and we still miss her. Not only do we miss her good humor, generosity, and eclectic spirit, but we also miss the way that she help us understand the world in a different way. Each day held something interesting. Each person brought something new. Each idea connected her with someone important in her life. She lived as she died, surrounded by friends and family, in her room and in her heart.

Re-entry

It's not good that vacation's over, but it's good to be home. Well, the part where Marley got sprayed by a skunk last night wasn't so good. We got through it pretty well. A combination of tomato juice, and then soap and water, and then a concoction that we got from the vet's the last time he was sprayed (the time that he had the skunk in his mouth) gave us a dog that smells pretty much like a dog. My co-workers may notice a slight fragrance that isn't Old Spice, but that shouldn't last more than a few days. Marley was very tentative when he went out this morning and was glad to get back inside to lie in front of the stove.

We finished our time at the camp in fine style. Adam, Jennie, and Lily came for a visit. We toured the lake in the boat. Adam showed his chops as a water-skier and demonstrated his prowess at pie-baking (blueberry).

At home, we shuffled through the big box of mail that the post office had held for us, a couple of letters, many bills, a few magazines, a lot of catalogs. The world missed us.

So now there are tinges of orange in the maples and it's dark earlier each day. With the bright blue sky this morning, it's uneasily like that bright and cool morning four years ago when so much changed.

Angles of the sun

There are two small windows on the east side of the camp, on the same side as the fireplace. At this time of year, and again in early spring, the rising sun sends beams of light through the window and straight across the room to the kitchen counter on the opposite wall.

We need a fire in the stove every morning now. We have our breakfast at the table near the stove, rather than on the porch. We went for a swim yesterday afternoon and noticed the layer of cold water on the bottom. That cold water hadn’t been there even a few days ago.

Today we’ll go for a walk at local nature preserve, a nice path a couple of miles long up and then down a wooded hillside. Marley will have a good run. We’ll then have lunch at the Petersham General Store. This afternoon I’ll sharpen the chain saw so that we can continue to cut up the scrap wood that’s around.

Mike and Lynn brought their family here on Monday. We had a wonderful time with the boat and with each other’s company. The tube that we pull behind the boat can hold three people, so everyone in their family, except for Cassandra, had a chance to ride. Mike, Michael, and Matt each had their turns with water-skiing with minimal loss of blood. Adam, Jennie, and Lily will be here on Saturday.

I met with a new doctor on Tuesday and we sketched out a new plan to get me on track. I enjoyed the visit. The doctor is very pleasant and very smart.

When my new job starts in a couple of weeks, I don’t know how much time or energy I’ll have for this kind of writing. I’ve enjoyed this a lot, enjoyed the chance to sort out my thoughts and to stay in touch with family and friends.

Windows on the world

For the seven years that we’ve been taking our vacations at the camp, we’ve kept a list of our vacation activities. Some years are quiet and our list records canoeing, walks, and rest. Others have interrupted by external events, such as my mother’s health in 2000, a trip to take a friend to detox, or replacing a water pump. This year’s list includes an offer of a permanent job, an offer that I received on Monday and accepted yesterday. It’s a job with the company where I’ve worked as a contractor, although with a different group. I’ll start on September 26th, giving me a couple of weeks to wrap up my current assignments.

It’s exciting. I’m very grateful to the people who helped me get this job and who have supported me during the transition. I’m a fortunate guy.

And what else is on the vacation list? Well, we do have a new boat. There’s always work to do, wood to split and stack, brush that needs clearing, objects of various sizes and shapes that need painting. It’s not all work, though. Hardly. We get to visit some favorite restaurants and farm stands. We get to swim whenever we want. With Marley back with us again, walks through the woods are more lively.

Storms are around, spin-offs from what’s left of Katrina. There are fresh breezes that have knocked down a few branches. We’ll keep the windows open until the rains get heavy. We open more windows more while we’re at the camp. It’s a reminder that we’re in the woods, even if there’s a laptop and phone line in one corner of the room and a TV in the other corner, showing pictures of the devastation down south.

Autumn skies

Driving home in yesterday's sun and showers, I could see that the sky has taken its turn toward autumn. It is, recalling Emily Dickinson, that slant of light, and the cold air above that's a richer blue, even as the thunderclouds roil upwards. We'll get our share of hot days, to be sure, but they won't last. The shorter daylight hours can't sustain a heat wave. It's definitely fall on the way. You can see touches of red and orange on the swamp maples.

Sandra's driving to PEI today. She called from the border and reported a good trip so far. She'll visit with her parents and return with Marley on Monday. We'll spend the next two weeks at the camp. We have a day trip to Boston planned; we'll meet a long-time friend of Sandra's whose daughter is starting at BU. We also have one day planned in town for a doctor's appointment for me.

Work is going well. I made a presentation at my boss's staff meeting yesterday. For those who care about such things, I demonstrated how one can make a graphical representation of the topic layout in a FrameMaker document. I've been able to work full days this week for the time in quite a while.

Late yesterday I received a background clearance form from the recruiter who's been handling my latest job prospect. I'll take this as a sign of progress. I don't think that they'd be doing a background check if I hadn't passed the first couple of rounds of interviews.

The FDA is considering regulations regarding the use of leeches and maggots. Leeches, maggots, Washington bureaucrats: <Insert your own joke here.>

I bought my first $40 tankful of gas yesterday. When I was a teenager, the school lunch, a pack of cigarettes, and a gallon of gas were about the same price (close to 25¢). Kids would skip lunch and buy one or the other.

Outside the gas station, a guy had a guitar and small amp and was singing Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, his voice as out of tune as his guitar.

What does this thing do?

So we now own a boat. It's a 17' Larson with a motor big enough for water skiing. We still have some paperwork to complete on the registration, followed by a trip to the Registry. (In order to obtain a registration, you're supposed to have a pencil tracing of the hull identification number. The ID number is etched faintly on an aluminum strip on the stern.)

We bought the boat in a private sale from a co-worker. He arranged for his dealer to clean and deliver the boat to us. Sandra waited at the camp all day on Friday while the dealer didn't deliver the boat (and didn't call to let us know) because the seller hadn't been paid the dealer for the cleaning. Finally, on Saturday morning, the dealer sent Homer and Jethro to deliver the boat. They got the truck stuck as they were pulling the empty trailer from the water. Jethro and I pushed the truck out, although Jethro was smoking a cigarette and doing mostly heavy leaning. After they left, we found something that looked suspiciously like a drain plug in one of the cup holders. In the meantime, we noticed that the bilge pump wasn't keeping up with the water coming in. We learned in phone call to the dealer that we needed to get the plug into place immediately or we'd ruin the motor and, that, yes, they took out the plug, but it wasn't their responsibility to put it back in. ("If you had purchased your boat from a reputable dealer, you wouldn't have had these problems." Anyone know of a reputable dealer?) We located the drain hole, put in the plug, and resumed pumping.

As the result of a labo(u)r dispute, the CBC has locked many of its workers. As a result, we have to turn to the BBC to learn about Canada's antics in the high arctic, sending two warships to assert its claim over an uninhabited island that's also claimed by Greenland (Denmark). The CBC web site in PEI hasn't provided news for several weeks. The locked-out employees are preparing plans for a strike web site. In the meantime, we can still rely on the Guardian ("Covers Prince Edward Island like the Dew") for our Island news. The first gay couple married on the Island last Friday.

After reading Pat Roberston's latest screed, that we should assassinate Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, I thought it important to find some sane resources on religion. The Theology Resources (via Lockergnome) site is one of the better ones that I've found, including lots of good reference material.

Last week we learned that the husband of a former co-worker is gravely ill. We use our spare moments to reflect on our gratitude for what we've received, knowing how quickly things can change.

To be treated by a nerd, you must think like a nerd

Yesterday The New York Times published an article how patients are treated in hospitals and other medical settings. When I met with my doctor yesterday afternoon, he said that the article had been forwarded to everyone in the clinic at least three times and was causing a lot of discussion among the staff. In brief, the article says that we're treated pretty much as meat with an insurance card.

Later in the day, I had another appointment with another doctor. I had to ask him three times to write down the name of a medication that we were considering so that I could do some research. Finally, when I provided an index card from the pack that I carry in my shirt pocket, he seemed pleased that he was dealing with a nerd like him and wrote both the brand and generic names of the medication.

The other day I mentioned that Joe and his friend, Seth, caught fish with buckets. They weren't just being resourceful. In the boathouse, we have some very old fishing poles, but no working tackle. The next time we go to Wal-Mart, we'll pick up a cheap rod, reel, line, and hook, nothing stylish like this. We might even get licenses. A friend used to promote fishing as a way to serenity, only occasionally interrupted by the actual catching of fish.

During the overnight, the BBC had a story about the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote. Earlier in the year Venezuela gave away thousands of free copies of the book to mark the event. One of the points that I learned in college, and which was discussed in this radio piece, was the pronunciation of the title. Most often, we pronounce it Don Ki-ho-ti. Even the Spanish speakers pronounced it this way. There is, however, some evidence that Cervantes pronounced Kwix-oat. We use the word quixotic, for example. Some citations even have it as Don Quijote. Y'see, if you give academicians something like this to fuss about, they'll leave you alone for quite a while.

You can now write blogs from Microsoft Word and post them to Blogger with a new Word plug-in. I'll stick to the web interface for now. Word is too slow and bloated for quick notes such as these, IMO. Also, I can't imagine that all of that Word-generated HTML can be healthy for Blogger's diet.

I have a second interview this morning. This one will be by telephone with the manager in White Plains. The challenge will be finding a place where I can talk freely. Conference rooms are hard to find on short notice. I may have to hide in plain sight and take the call on my cell phone while I'm in the cafeteria or outside at one of the picnic tables.

My current job is good and, if there was an opportunity to stay with it as a permanent employee, I would stay. I'm not chasing a lot of job leads at this point and so don't need a subterfuge like this to make it look like I'm doing real work.

The start of the season of wood

The air is cool this morning. Someone in the neighborhood has a wood fire going. Which reminds me that I need to order some wood for next year. The prices on seasoned wood are jumping up along with the prices for home heating oil. I'm hoping that the prices for green wood won't be climbing as much, but our wood guy is having to pay a lot more for fuel when he cuts and delivers. Mike delivered a half-truck load to the camp - oak and maple that will be good for sauna.

This installment of "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" comes from NPR's Talk of the Nation. Last week, they had a segment about great car chases. (Bullitt and Blues Brothers naturally were among the favorites.) Several minutes were devoted to playing clips from the movies. On the radio.

Elvis left the building on this date in 1977. As I mentioned on his birthday, my favorite material is the kind of backstage mix of rockabilly and gospel that formed the foundation of his music. When he was in that element, he was never better. So, if you see him pumping gas someplace, don't ask for Vegas show tunes. Ask for 'Brown-Eyed Handsome Man' or 'Peace in the Valley.' You'll get an earful that'll last a long time.

If cats want to travel, they get to stay in luxury. For dogs, it's the same old story: pack in, pack out.

Ye shall be fishers of fish

The party on Saturday was a fine one indeed. It was hot, so everyone stayed near or in the water as much as they could.

All of us like our toys, be it Xbox, iPod, power boats, or whatever, but it's good to be reminded that we can be delighted by nature as well. We have wild blueberries growing on our shore. During the party Sandra and I swam the shore with Tess and Krista and ate blueberries until we were blue in the teeth. Joe and his friend, Seth, stayed overnight on Saturday. The next morning, we had blueberry pancakes made with the wild blueberries. After breakfast, they went down to the water with the leftover hot dog and hamburger rolls to feed the fish. Using just a couple of buckets, they caught seven fish, kivvers and one small bass. The fishermen in the boat out in the cove, with their fancy lures and depth finders, laughed in disbelief.

Job leads seem to come in bunches. Over the weekend, a friend sent me a referral regarding prospects at a large computer company. In addition, my automated searches turned up a couple of interesting prospects, each at companies where I know at least one person.

The weekend mail brought news that a former manager, who moved to Seattle last year to work at Amazon, has retired. He's seeing the sights of the Northwest and enjoying the leisurely life.

The big European mobile phone company, Vodafone, is onto something with their new product called Vodafone Simply. They have designed a simpler interface for their mobile phones, using text instead of cryptic icons to indicate when a text message has arrived, when the battery is low, or if you have a good signal. Although they don't really say so in their promotional materials, they're targeting the older market. This service is not available in the U.S. yet. Vodafone owns about 45% of Verizon Wireless, so we might see something before too long.

If you have to check the spelling on this word, you're either not comfortable using it or you're way too comfortable.

Big thunderstorms rolled through the state yesterday afternoon and evening. We were spared the worst, but many towns lost trees and limbs and were flooded. This morning, cool fresh air is filling the house.

The skies are alive

Today's interview went well. The hiring manager said that I was an excellent candidate. She'll set up a second round of telephone interviews for next week. (The rest of the team is in White Plains, New York.) The project feels a lot like the Rational Suite team that I joined several years ago. For the first month or two, I would spend a couple of days each week in White Plains; the rest of the time, I'd have an office locally.

In the meantime, a few interesting problems landed on my desk - accessing the Windows registry from a script and helping a customer with a problem.

Tonight is the night for the Persied meteor showers. We will have hazy and cloudy skies so the viewing won't be good. One night about 20 years ago, Sandra and the boys met me at Logan Airport when I was returning from a business trip. We drove to Prince Edward Island through the night. In the dark skies of northern Maine, the sky was alive with meteors.

Mike's construction business has a web site.

The weather remains hot and will get hotter still over the weekend. A good time for a party at the camp tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Joe. Happy Birthday, Marian.

Getting things done

Last night I received a call from a recruiter regarding a permanent job. The position is a senior individual contributor on a high-visibility project. (The CEO of the company follows the project closely.) I have an interview with the hiring manager tomorrow morning. I'll trust that the process will lead me to the right decision.

Today's automated search for a documentation position turned up this one:

Position: Software/Firmware Developer
Location: Gardner, MA (MUST BE OKAY WITH LOCATION TO APPLY!!!)

I was talking with a couple recently about some ways to help ensure that their teenagers were using the computer and Internet properly. One way was to have the computer in an open part of the house. The parents agreed that it was a good idea. Until they could move the computer, however, they found another approach. The father was keeping the keyboard and mouse in the back of his truck, at least until school starts.

It's been easy to get overwhelmed by my assignments lately. I've taken to writing things on index cards and adding a time estimate for each task. If it's less than five minutes, I'll try to complete it then and there. If it's less than 15 minutes, I'll prioritize it and put it in a queue. If it's more than 15 minutes of work, I'll try to break it into 15-minute chunks and schedule those. My desk has the look of a large ransom note, but the system seems to be working.

give(peace(chance(1)));

When I was traveling a lot, I would usually take the red-eye flight home from the west coast. I had a small MP3 player that held two hours of music. Most of the time, I listened to Buena Vista Social Club. Ibrahim Ferrer, who died last Saturday, was featured on the Buena Vista recording. What I know of Spanish wouldn't get me a shoe shine, but no matter. His smooth, rich tenor voice will always remind me of a ride home, half asleep in the darkness, in the sky.

Today's automated job search for a technical documentation position brought a listing for an Explosive Inspector. It reminds me of the bomb squad t-shirt that read, "If you see me running, try to keep up."

Here's some interesting summary findings about stress and how it affects the brain and other parts of the body.

Our Middle East policy, written as a UNIX shell script, reminds us, as always, to read the fine manual.