Category Archives: miscellaneous

America, Documenting America, Harry Potter, miscellaneous, self-publishing, The Gutter Chronicles, Writing

Back To Work

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Yes, how sad it is: The babysitting is over. We spent a great time from Wednesday evening until Saturday evening watching our three oldest grandchildren. But we said goodbye to them just after 6:00 p.m. on Saturday and made the drive home.

Sunday I just rested. That is, I didn’t go to church. I had no responsibilities there, so I decided to sleep in and take it easy. Fixed a nice breakfast, made a Wal-Mart run in the afternoon. Prepared a simple but nice supper. Went to bed by 11:00 p.m.

So, how did I spend my time while watching the kids and yesterday? Thursday and Friday mornings I did work for the office. I had my work laptop with me, and connected to our system via a VPN. I kept up with e-mails, made calls and received calls on one project, and stayed in the know. Afternoons I began reading The Gutter Chronicles: Volume 2 for the third time, mainly to look for redundancies, but also for typos and better wording. I read Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, and typed the edits Sunday afternoon. I hereby declare it ready for publishing.

Also on Sunday afternoon, I started and completed my mother-in-law’s income taxes, Federal and State. She doesn’t owe anything, so I don’t know if I’ll file the forms or not. I’ve done her taxes for 16 years now.

Also on Sunday, I began reading for research for the next book in my Documenting America series. It will be on the making of the Constitution. I took the right volume from the Annals of America set with me to Oklahoma City, but found I couldn’t concentrate on it enough to read. But last night I did read in it. I scanned a letter from John Adams, found it germane to the book, and marked it to be included. Next I started on a long piece by Noah Webster, a book excerpt. I’m pretty sure I’ll use it in my book, but it’s long and rambling, and I need to know it much better before I know exactly how I’m going to use it. Having begun work on this book, I’ll have to start a writing diary for that. I shall do so on my noon hour.

The other thing I did, or actually my wife and I did, was to finish reading aloud The Prisoner of Askaban. We each read this separately some years ago, but decided to re-read them together. Actually, it wasn’t so much a conscious decision as it was a falling into it. When the grandkids were here last month, we read some of The Chamber of Secrets to them. We then finished the book on our own after they left, and it just seemed natural to pick up the next volume and read it. Whether we go on or not we shall see. I have much other reading I want to do, so my choice will be to take a break from the Harry Potter books.

There you have my report on my stewardship of time for the last five days. Hopefully, this week will be equally productive.

miscellaneous, self-publishing, The Gutter Chronicles, Writing

The Best Laid Plans

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I had hoped to take time yesterday afternoon to write a blog post for today. Alas, obligations and other things took time away from me, and I didn’t get it done.

I did manage to finish reading The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2 to my wife. She loved it, and laughed at all the right places. Then I typed the edits from the second round of editing. I decided to print it once more and read it once more, with as few interruptions as possible. I feel I have some duplication, and that I need some additional character descriptions. I should be able to do that this week.

I also managed to read a good part of a book proposal I’m reviewing for a fellow writer, a retired missionary who is part of our church. I have a little more to do, which should happen tonight. That obligation will then be complete.

So, no blog post today, except for this excuse for a blog post. I hope to have a writer interview for you on Friday.

miscellaneous, stock market, The Gutter Chronicles, Writing

The Monday Report

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I had intended to write a book review today, but circumstances have worked against me. I got to the office this morning to find the workmen not done, and I won’t be working in my office today—at least not at the beginning.

You see, the outside wall of my office is under duress. Shortly after I moved in there, about a year ago following major remodeling throughout our building, the outer wall began to crack. It seemed to be just the stucco finish on the wall, not the drywall behind it. That would mean no major problem. About three months later, the contractor returned to take care of various punch-list items, and repaired it. They cut out the parts that were cracking, back to undamaged stucco, and re-did it. Excepting a slight change in the texture, you would never know it had been a problem.

Then, about a month after that, it started again. Same exact thing, same exact place. Only this time it progressed faster and was a little more extensive. Last week the contractor finally got back to try to figure out what’s going on. Clearly, this was not just cosmetic. They decided to tear the drywall out, see what’s behind it. They scheduled the work for 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning, and advised me they were unlikely to be finished on Monday.

Sure enough, they weren’t. New drywall was in place, but not yet mudded. So I found an empty cubicle nearby, set up my laptop, and here I am. It appears to me that I will have limited access to my office for the next three days. That’s the bad new. The good news is: maybe, at last, I’ll become more proficient at using a laptop keyboard. Something’s going on in my office; I hear their machines behind the closed door.

The morning routine was also changed in my taking a different route to the office. Coming home yesterday afternoon, I went a certain way to check out my morning commute route in the daylight. As I expected, the route is littered with potholes. Enough so that you can’t always dodge them if there is on-coming traffic. So this morning I went a different way. It had almost no potholes. The drive was easy, traffic heavy but moving. I had to put gasoline in the pickup, and arrived at the work only five to seven minutes behind my target arrival time.

I was coming home yesterday afternoon from an afternoon writer’s event, not from church (which did fill my Sunday morning). Yes, a real writer’s event, the first one I’ve been to in about a year. It was a book event held by the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets, a local organization in Bella Vista. Bentonville author J.C. Crumpton . He has several books published. His talk was about his writing process, how he came up with ideas for these books. A total of nineteen people were there. I had a chance to talk at length with the head of the organization, and briefly with J.C. Hopefully, I’ll interview him on this blog before long.

Saturday was an interesting day. Rain graced the early morning, or the promise of rain at the time I got up. I made some coffee and headed to The Dungeon, not to write, but to do whatever indoor chores I could. First, I went on-line to my bank to update the checkbook. Then, I entered income and expense into my budget spreadsheet, getting that up-to-date and double-checked. Then, I tackled mountains of receipts that I hadn’t yet dealt with. For the Wal-Mart receipts, that mean checking them against budget entries to make sure I had them in the right expense categories, then filing. For others, it meant filing or moving to the shred pile.

After that, I filed financial papers. This took some time. I got mine done, but not my mother-in-law’s. Hers are in a big pile, which I will get to probably next weekend.

Then, I went back to income taxes, which I had started last week. First is our trading partnership tax return, which is due March 15. I had made all the trade entries, along with miscellaneous income and most expenses. Saturday I finished the expenses, and looked for a $100 discrepancy between my records and those of my brokers. It took me fifteen minutes to find my mistake, a simple typo, and get that correct. That meant I had everything I needed to actually fill out the return. I hadn’t planned on that for Saturday, but I thought, it’s pouring rain; I can’t work outside; might as well stick to it and get ’em done.

So I did. In about an hour I had the forms filled out, ready to print and proofread. That will be a Monday-Tuesday task. I feel great getting to this point, which is way ahead of where I was last year.

As a result of all of this, I did no writing on the weekend. None. I had hoped to write several thousand words in The Gutter Chronicles – Volume 2, but it was not to be. Maybe tonight. I did get a lot of reading done, research for a future, maybe-this-year, publication. Maybe I could have written instead of read, but both are necessary tasks.

So, I post this from Cubicleville, commending you all the grace of God this Monday morning.

family, miscellaneous, Writing

Getting Back Into a Routine

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I’ve said it before: I enjoy routine. To be able to start each day in the same way, to progress through the day with the same activities as the day before. The routine will vary between weekday and weekend, but each has its own routine, and I like each in its own way.

I was in a good blog routine, until my website was stolen sometime between Jan 15 and 22. I had just missed making a routine blog post. I went to do the next routine post and…couldn’t log in. Someone had changed my user name and/or password. It took three or four days to figure out what to do with it, pay for some beefed-up security, and get my site back. I think it was Jan 24 or 25 when that was accomplished. I made a quick blog post about it, and, since that time…nothing. No more blog posts. In fact, very little writing. I was thrown out of my routine.

But here I am, back again, on a routine Monday, with my routine blog post. I also had some success working on my work-in-progress of late. I’m now past the midway point, approaching the three-quarter point. I think I can finish by the end of February, which might mean publishing in March. Now, I also need to get back to a routine blog posting schedule. I’m going to stick with Monday and Friday. That was working well, describing my weekend activities on Monday, and my weekday activities on Friday.

Along with that will be discussion of my work(s)-in-progress, my reading and reviews of books read, my observations of the world, and here and there a post about any old thing I think will attract readers. So, look for me to be here more regularly. I don’t plan on disappointing you.

Oh, yeah, a few days before I drafted this post, and a couple of days after, I had a pair of personal calamities. I’ll talk about them as well.

 

miscellaneous

Hacked

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The word “hack” appears to be undergoing some changes to meaning, and I didn’t get the memo. Our pastor has a sermon series going on titled “Life Hacks”. It’s steps you can take to improve your Christian walk. So, I’m learning that “hack” is a noun meaning “a clever tip or technique for doing or improving something” [Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary].

Who knew? I mean, why didn’t someone issue an announcement about this? Hack doesn’t mean that. It means to chip away at something, as with an ax. It means to cough sharply. It means to attempt to gain illegal access to a computer or related technology item. It doesn’t mean a clever tip or technique.

I’m being somewhat facetious. Yes, I’ve heard this newer use of the word, over the last five to ten years. How in the world the old uses for hack have been supplemented by this newer use I don’t know, but this old Baby Boomer doesn’t approve.

But, using the older meaning [an act or instance of gaining or attempting to gain illegal access to a computer or computer system], this website was hacked. It occurred sometime between Jan 15 and Jan 22. I tried to login on the 22nd to make a post, having skipped my normal post on Jan 19th. I couldn’t get in. Someone had changed either my password or user name, or both. Nothing on the site seemed to be changes; I just wasn’t able to get in to manage the site.

Monday I was in no mental condition to deal with this. I started investigating this on Tuesday, but wasn’t able to get much done. I did some checking through WordPress.org, but wasn’t able to figure out much. Finally, on Wednesday, early morning in my pre-work time at the office, I started dealing with it through my web hosting service. They were helpful. They directed me to a security company they work with. I bit the bullet and subscribed to a service to get a firewall and heavy-duty scanner set up. It took over an hour on the phone, but it got done. I had immediate access to my site.

So, I’m back, after a week of not posting then two days of being locked out. I still have more security stuff to do, and I’m in the self-education phase of that. I hope in a day or two at most I’ll have all the other stuff done, and will feel more confident about jumping back in and posting regularly.

miscellaneous, Writing

Not Really Feeling It

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I missed blogging last Friday. I had a couple of things in mind that I could post, but I wasn’t really feeling it, so I didn’t. Not really feeling it today, either. This is the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but I’m working. The forecast last night called for snow starting in the early morning, perhaps as early at 5 a.m. I decided if it was snowing when I got up, I’d take the day off. I was up around 5:15 a.m., and looked outside. No snow. Went back to bed, and woke up a minute before the alarm was to go off at 6:00. Looked outside. No snow. So I stayed up and went about getting ready for work.

Next year, on a day like this, I'll be in the sunroom, only moderately heated, with a cup of coffee and a good book.
Next year, on a day like this, I’ll be in the sunroom, only moderately heated, with a cup of coffee and a good book.

6:26 a.m. rolled around; I had everything ready to go to work. Opened the garage door. No snow. So I got in the car and drove to work, stopping for gasoline along the way. Got to work around 7:00 a.m. Still no snow. Disappointed in the no-show snow showers, I quit looking out my window. Until around 10:00 a.m., that is, when I looked out and saw it was snowing, just starting to stick to the ground.

Around 10:15 a.m. I stepped outside the building, just to be in the snow for a while. As always, I found it refreshing. At noon, if it’s still snowing, I’ll go out for a little longer, just to feel the snow hitting my face, and dreaming about being a kid again.

I’m not sure what to do about the blog. When I began this many years ago, on the Blogger site, the prevailing wisdom was that a writer should have a blog. Now, I’m hearing new prevailing wisdom, that the Age of the Blogs has passed, and maybe a writer doesn’t need one after all. I’ll be thinking about this, and deciding what to do.

Meanwhile, enjoy your holiday, those of you who get one. Enjoy your snow day, those of you who like snow. Possibly I’ll see you on my next regular blogging day, Friday.

miscellaneous, Writing

A Gathering of Writers

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About a month ago a I saw a notice for a writers gathering on Sunday, Jan 2, in Bella Vista. It’s been close to a year since I’ve gone to any writing event, either as a participant or observer. That was a small group, but it was good. So, I put this event on my schedule and looked forward to it.

There’s just something about being with other writers. I can’t explain it. It just gives me a boost, and makes me write all the more.

So yesterday I got home from church after picking up lunch from Wendy’s and dropping recyclables at the AARP recycling center. That gave me an hour to eat, rest a bit, and drive the fifteen minutes to the venue. I got there at exactly the time it was supposed to start, and found…

…one other car there—a pickup, actually—with one man in it. He rolled down his window and said he was calling the organizer to find out what was going on. Two or three calls later he got the word: It was cancelled.

Disappointed, I drove the fifteen minutes home, got some coffee, and checked the website. Now, when I first heard about this event, I didn’t see it on the organization’s website. Rather, it was on a Facebook page for the Ozarks region, a place where a number of organizations share their information. Now, I checked the organization’s Facebook page and, sure enough, there was the notice that the event had been cancelled.

Shame on me for not double-checking, or for not going to the organization’s own Facebook page instead of to that other page.

Ah, well, I went to The Dungeon with the mug of coffee, but didn’t feel much like writing. I looked over a few things, did some planning, but, otherwise, just pulled up some oldies on YouTube and listened to them. That, is always time well spent for me.

family, Genealogy, miscellaneous

2017 Re-cap

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While I had much family here for Christmas (some still here, till tomorrow), I didn’t worry about keeping to my blog schedule. So here I am, writing this post on New Year’s Eve, my birthday, for posting tomorrow. I think what I’ll do is just paste in our Christmas letter, perhaps adding a few comments at the end.

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Christmas displayDecember 2017

Greetings family and friends!

This branch of the Todd family has fallen into routine. Not a rut, for that has a negative connotation. Routine, on the other hand, can be good. It helps you to be efficient in your activities, and to effectively complete all tasks you need to complete. Yes, routine is good.

the four EsOur routine was broken a few times this year, three of them being extra significant. In June we drove, in caravan with our daughter Sara and her family, to the quadrennial General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene in Indianapolis. Richard was a delegate to one of the pre-assembly conventions. We went along to help out with the four kids, and, of course, to see old friends. Last time we attended general assembly was in 1980 when it was in Kansas City. The trip was good, without unsafe incidents of car trouble. It was indeed a good time. We saw those old friends, worshipped a great God with thousands of others, and were renewed and refreshed. Our accommodation was an older home rented by the week. We had a yard and parks nearby, so the kids had room to run.

Richard and SaraThen, on the way home, we spent a week in Branson, at a townhouse that is part of our timeshare company. We saw plenty of sights there. Branson has so much to do, for all ages. When someone wasn’t up to something, we just stayed at the townhouse. Miniature golf, Silver Dollar City, and a whole lot more filled our five days there. While we were gone for the almost two weeks, Lynda’s brother was here from Santa Fe to be with their mom. So we got to see him.

Another unexpected “event” came from Dave’s genealogy research. For years he has been trying to find out more information about his (supposed) maternal grandfather. Having only a name and a few anecdotal statements by his grandmother, he hit dead ends. Until DNA relatives showed up in 23andMe, and he was able to make connections. It turned out his grandfather had two other families, and he is now in touch with most of his previously-unknown first cousins from those families. Getting to know all these people, through Facebook so far, has been a delight.

And Dave had another “event” that broke up the routine. He’s been Corporate Trainer for CEI for eleven years now, and figured he’d stay that until his retirement at the end of next year. But, in early November his boss asked him to take on management of projects that have moved into the problem stage after construction. It started with three projects, is now up to four, and more are in sight. This has taken him back to his project management days. It has certainly been a change, as his hours have increased as he deals with the problems, leaving him almost no time for training. He thinks this new normal will take him right up to retirement.

Lynda has had some physical challenges this year. She’s had severe aches and pains show up in her legs, that caused her doctor to put her on a new medication. It turned out that med has some bad side-effects, however. She weaned herself off that med before things got bad. Now she’s wondering if other meds she takes have caused other problems, such as morning listlessness and what she calls “brain fog”. She does a lot of studying of health issues, and is hoping to gradually get off some meds and see if that helps. Meanwhile, she continues with stock trading, with Dave’s help from time-to-time. It looks like the year will turn out profitable.

We made several trips to Oklahoma City for grandchildren’s birthdays. They are growing up fast. The three older ones are in school, and little Elijah gets into everything when his sibs aren’t around. They teach him well. All three seem to like school, and to do well at it. Richard continues to split his time between pastoring the church and managing the R.O.C. ministry.

Charles at podiumCharles is now working two jobs. He continues as a dean for the College at the University of Chicago. He is also a dorm parent for an off-campus dorm. In both of these he stays busy. He will surely advance through university administration. The dorm thing is temporary. He plans on doing that for a year or two, then seeing where life and career takes him. Because his dorm job required him to be there over Thanksgiving, our family gathering is a Christmas this year.

EMB at birthdayEsther, now 92, continues as always, a little slower, a little farther removed from the world around her, but still kicking. She hasn’t had any new health problems develop this year. The biggest thing was the death of her sister, Faye, in July. We made the trip back to Meade for the funeral. So Esther, the oldest of four sisters, is the last still alive.

O Come O Come EmmanuelWe close this letter with a wish for the best for each of you. May God bless your lives, filling you with good things, and may they spill out with compassion for others.

Love,

Dave, Lynda, and Esther

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Emmanuel has come. We had a good Christmas with much family here, and contacting many more by phone. Yesterday I spent a quiet birthday with my mother-in-law and brother-in-law, as Lynda is in Oklahoma City for babysitting. For the moment, all is well. 2017 was a challenge in many ways. May 2018 be better.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, memories, miscellaneous

Death In The Journey

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Death does in fact change life, for those who are left to mourn.
Death does in fact change life, for those who are left to mourn.

In my last post, I started talking about the life journey I’ve been on. Several times death has punctuated that journey. At least once that death was life-changing. I allude to this in my most recent publication, When Death Changes Life. While those collected stories are officially fiction, they do come from a point of knowledge about how a death in the circumstances described will impact a family.

In my melancholy moments, I often think about another death: that of Chemala Johanan Babu. He worked for me in Kuwait. When I changed companies there and became a Director of Infrastructure Engineering Services at Kuwaiti Engineers Office, I inherited a crew that was working offsite. We were partnered with a British firm to improve one of the interstate-quality highways in Kuwait. The crew we supplied was mostly CAD technicians. They worked under the supervision of the Brits, in their office, although they were employees of our company. I had no need to do anything regarding this team. The Brits processed everything about them, even their timesheets. All I had to do was watch their billable hours get added to our department’s.

I met them all only once. When I learned that I had this crew working offsite, since I hadn’t met any of them, I made a trip across the city to meet them. They were all names to me, who became faces, but faces I wouldn’t ever have to deal with. Babu was one.

Nothing to do with, that is, until the job they were working on came to an end, and these men (about eight of them) would have to be let go. It was a sad day when I had to write them all a memo, telling them their assignment would come to an end in a month, and that we had no other work for them, and thus would have to let them go. Sad, yes, but they knew it was coming. They knew they took an assignment that would end at some point, and that their employment wasn’t needed after that. Kuwait allowed workers in their position to shop around on the open labor market, and hopefully they’d find a job with another engineering company.

The day after that memo was out, Babu was in my office. I recognized him, and realized I had seen him one other time, at the National Evangelical Church of Kuwait. There were two large Indian language congregations (Tamil and Malayalam, if I remember correctly), typically each over 1,000 in attendance, that met very early Friday morning, much earlier than the English Language Congregation, all of us sharing the same facilities. I had seen him there once, not sure why the two of us were there at the same time. Now here he was, the third time I’d seen him. I’d met him once, and then seen him. Now seeing him again, I realized who he was.

He came to plead his case to remain employed. He really needed the job, he said. There was something about his visa that wouldn’t allow him to stay in the country unemployed while looking for a job. He would have to go home. At least, now 27 years after the event, that’s how I remember it. I felt sorry for him, and said I’d see what I could do.

I checked with the other directors, scoured my own department’s workload, and had nothing. I did, however, have the promise of a couple of projects that would start soon. One was another roadway project with a different British firm; the other was improvements at a university campus. Neither project was guaranteed, but both looked good. We would know on both in a couple of months.

I decided I could take a chance, keep Babu on staff for a month while we waited on those projects, and help him out. If those projects both came through I would have to hire someone. I reasoned that keeping him on staff for a month without billable work would be no more expensive than having to go through a hiring process.

I called the off-site office to tell him the good news. He wasn’t there; had been that morning, but not since lunch. He didn’t call me that day. The next day I called again. He hadn’t yet reported to work. Later in the morning I learned the awful news. The previous day he had been to the Indian embassy on some personal business. Taking the bus to near the office, he crossed a six-lane road on foot. Except he didn’t make it. He was hit by an Iraqi driver who was in the country illegally and driving without a license. Babu was killed instantly.

A day or two later I went to pay my respects to the family. He had lived with his sister and brother-in-law in one of the poorer sections of Kuwait City. I went there to find the streets packed with people from southern India, all coming to mourn with the family. One of our senior mechanical engineers was from Babu’s province and language group. He met me and brought me up to the house, through the crowd.

Inside, I met only the brother-in-law, as the sister was wailing in another room and didn’t want to meet anyone. He and I talked about what would be done with the body, if the police were notified, if there were any mourning rituals I could participate in (such as fasting). It was a good ten-minute visit, and I was off again. The mechanical engineer thanked me over and over for coming. I hope it helped them.

So, this was part of my life journey. Not a happy part, obviously. But, as I said earlier, it’s something that always comes to mind in my melancholy moments. As I get older, and am nearer to death myself than to birth, death will become more and more a part of my life. I’ll have many more chances to grieve, and to mourn with others. Yet, the story of Babu will stay with me, forever a memorable part of my journey.

Christmas, miscellaneous

A Day Late

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I often write my Monday blog post on Sunday afternoon, and schedule it to post on Monday at 7:30 a.m. This past Sunday, alas, I spent that time working on our annual Christmas letter. Normally I write this, then Lynda edits it—sometimes lightly, sometimes severely. It gets done, as do the cards, and they go out. Seems like fewer and fewer each year.

That took up most of my free time Sunday afternoon, so I didn’t get my blog post written. I wanted to do it Monday morning, in my personal time at the office before I start my work day. Alas, other things got in the way. My devotional reading ran long, and morphed into editing. I read in my Harmony of the Gospels, either the text or the Passage Notes. Right now I’m in the passage notes. I read those notes related to a certain passage, then I go back to the text and read the harmonized passage. It’s a good way to do it, except I tend toward editing rather than just devotional reading. Still, I enjoy this, and don’t mind if it runs long.

But that meant I had less time than normal before work started, and I had to get to my long to-do list before I could tackle writing this post. So, here I am, writing it a day late.

And, I have nothing more to say, really. The days are busy, the evenings full, and sleep is a welcome escape from all I have to do. Retirement is now 1 year and 26 days away. Perhaps that will be a welcome relief as well.