I’ve been working at Coremetrics
since we moved down to Central Texas. The company is well-positioned to do
great over the next couple of years, as it provides a service that is pretty
well unmatched with a giant infrastructure
that will make it difficult for other businesses to copy without a lot of
funding and work. But in spite of all that promise, I’m leaving. The startup
company hours have been very hard on my family and me, and I’m
desperate to establish a better balance between work and home life. Enter Origin, a division of the computer game
company Electronic Arts. They’ve come up with
a great benefits package, a slight raise, and the opportunity to work at
home two days a week, which will both ease the pain of commuting from San
Marcos and allow me more time with my family. I won’t be directly involved
with the game-making process, but will instead be doing the somewhat less
glamorous work of creating applications for use internally, primarily by the
customer support staff. It promises to be interesting and varied work, and
I’m quite looking forward to getting started. My first day will be August
21.

Yesterday at 2:15pm, my grandfather on my father’s
side died. He was my sole remaining grandparent, and had wrestled with
Alzheimer’s disease for several years, degenerating from being able to live on
his own, to on his own with the help of family, to a retirement home, and over
the last several years to a nursing home in Seguin. The death was a bit of a
shock, as it didn’t result from the disease that had wasted his mind, but from a
kidney infection that came on fairly abruptly. My dad got the first call around
1:00 yesterday morning, and was able to be with my grandfather during his last
hours. Though Grandad was never fully conscious, Dad was pretty sure he heard
him as he was talking to him. You know, even though he’d been dying for years,
and with the assurance that he’s far better off now that our faith provides,
it’s still incredibly wrenching to finally lose him. I hadn’t really expected
to, but I found myself choked up and crying with my dad on the phone. We’ll miss
you, Grandad.

I have a new favorite band: Mad River, here in
Austin, formerly based in St. Louis. I’ve never heard them and I’m a bit vague
on what kind of music they play, but whenever you have a chance to go see them,
you should do so, and pay twice cover. Why my enthusiasm? Well, when I ran out
of gas today on the way to lunch, they rescued me. Thanks,
guys.

I recently finished rereading Larry Niven’s
Ringworld, from which I’d been away for about a decade, and which
therefore held some surprises for my forgetful brain. A member of the Giant
Mysterious Space Artifact school of literature, a sub-sub-genre it shares with
the Rama and Riverworld stories, it centers around the journey to and
exploration of a great big ring-shaped construct that encircles a sun. The
civilazations on the ring have fallen into ruin, and the members of the journey
are faced with the challenge of getting off the ring once they crash-land
without the help of much technology other than what they salvage from their
ship. As with the first installment in the other GMSA stories, there’s still
much left unexplained, giving the author an opportunity to milk his idea for a
couple more sequels. A fun read with some interesting
ideas.

I’m starting to really feel like I’m ready for a break! This past weekend
went largely as planned: we picked up Emily at the airport, packed our
remaining furniture, and attended Daniel Davenport’s birthday party. Emily
really enjoyed her time in New York, and though she’s glad to be home, seems
to still miss Martha a fair bit. Our move was made a bit easier by the
purchase of some of our furniture by the prospective buyers of our old home.
I’m not sure we would have had enough U-Haul space if we hadn’t been able to
leave those items behind. (Many thanks to the folks who helped us with
loading and unloading — it would have been dreadful without you.) Daniel’s
party was great fun, and broadened our parenting horizons a bit as we
discovered that Liam loves Skee-Ball. Since then, I’ve been back to work,
Emily’s been sick, Kathy’s been unpacking, and Abby and Liam have been
running amok. In spite of the fact that we haven’t gotten much rest for a
while, we’re very grateful that our house is about ready to sell, and that I’ll likely be able to start spending some more time with the family
soon. (More details on that as they become available.)