And I was washed over with a sense of well-being and contentment.

Well-being and contentment are not such common emotions to me that I fail to notice them. In fact, it’s been quite some time since I’ve felt them without threat looming at the edges of them, as though I better enjoy them now, quickly, because if I start thinking about the wrong things they will go away. No, I just felt happy, and like I very well might stay happy all the way through the end of the Superbowl tonight (and beyond, when the Pats cream the Giants!)

By the time the Ketchup Advisory board commercial came on, we were eating funny curly spaghetti-type pasta (bought from our local butcher), and giggling around the kitchen table. Garrison made a joke about radio, and how no one was listening to it, and it got me thinking.

I remember when NPR started being part of our life. It was shortly after we moved to Mineral, perhaps 1988, with the long car rides that entailed. Before that, we listened to oldies on the radio, and tuned in specially to listen to Paul Harvey. It was before the real rise of talk radio. With NPR, suddenly, the news entered my life. I struggled to catch up and figure out what the Iran-Contra affair was. I was completely snookered by an April Fool’s joke announcing that Starbucks was building a trans-continental coffee pipeline. I joked that I was getting my NPR PHD, and I listened all the time, even during lunch at school to Ray Suarez (who was infinitely preferable to Juan Williams IMO) while eating a pizza pocket and drinking apple juice. The theme song to “Talk of the Nation” still generates a Pavlovian mouth-water reaction and a great desire for pizza pockets.

These NPR shows were a very important part of my family’s lives. Every week we listened to a somewhat younger Garrison Keillor, after our own Protestant church services. He spoke of a world more familiar to us than the urban and urbane one that dominates most media. We too lived in a small town with a lake and a good network of gossip. Saturday mornings were also precious radio-wise. I woke early and joyfully (those of you who know me know how incredibly implausible that is – but true!) on Saturdays to take the hour and a half trip in to Tacoma to the Tacoma Youth Symphony rehearsals. My commute was accompanied by “Rewind” and “Car Talk”. I usually passed the Tacoma Dome as they ran the Car Talk credits. I remember I was leaving a rehearsal the day that Yitzak Rabin was assassinated, and was just old enough to weep for the chance for peace that bled out with his assassin’s bullets. My family would again gather in the evening to hear “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” trying to guess the quiz answers before the guests. If we perhaps scheduled it so we could be sure to catch our shows, well, that only made sense.

As I shared some of those same moments with my young and growing family, I thought of how lovely it is. The most precious of these radio shows are still on, with their original casts. Click and Clack are still there. Garrison somehow still finds new material in a gentler age that fades into memory. “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” is still wicked funny. (Rewind didn’t survive, but you take what you can get.) In tv, even the best shows only last a decade, if that. M*A*S*H only lasted 11 seasons. The entire world of media has fundamentally shifted in the fifteen or twenty years since I was a kid at home listening with my parents. Everything is change and newness. Except these things, which mean so much to me.

But for now, for at least this bright cheerful Super Bowl Sunday, Dusty and Lefty are still out there herding cattle on the prairie, just like they were when I was a girl. You can still win Carl Kasell’s voice on your home answering machine (as if anyone has one of those), even though he laid down his serious news microphone. And Car Talk’s official statistician is still Marge Innovera. And there are still bright Sunday mornings to be filled with the joy of living and family.

Thane on Saturday

Thane is awfully healthy for a sick kid. Alternately, he’s awfully sick for a healthy kid. Something like that. After Thane’s three days of vomitin the week I was off, we had a week of general good health as I started my job. Then last weekend it was Grey’s turn to throw up. 

But on Monday when I went to pick up Thane, the nice daycare lady had a piece of paper for me to sign. After two – ahem – liquid stools a day, a kid can’t go back to the Y for at least 24 hours. So Thane was verboten to go back Tuesday. I’m having trouble remembering now if that’s when the problem really started, or if it stretched back to the weekend. Usually I would check my blog, but I periodically pretend to make attempts at taste and discretion and failed to chronicle this fascinating issue. Anyway, my patient, long-suffering husband worked from home with a constant Scooby Doo sound track in the background. Wednesday morning my husband took my son to the doctor for another issue. While there, Thane – ahem – demonstrated his digestive problems for the doctor. 

The doctor recommended immediately discontinuing all dairy products for at least a week after Thane got better. This threw us into a tizzy since 80% of Thane’s calories come from dairy products. His favorite foods are milk, cheese, yogurt, butter and bacon. (The bacon being the 20%) But the very idea of a long term dietary constraint terrifies me, so I comply. I’m not strong enough for a life without dairy, or an elimination diet. No! Thane returned to school – briefly – before being sent home again. Once again, my husband manned up to the task.

Thursday dawned with no improvement. My husband now has the dialogue memorized for all the Scooby episodes, including that one with the Speed Buggy. I called my brother, figuring hey! He’s part time! It’s totally, like, pastoral to drive 8 hours in a 24 hour period to watch your sister’s child with digestive problems, right? Anyway, he gets several dozen hero points for taking Thane today, and moreover having dinner ready for us by the time we got home.

Now I simply exist in fear. What if Thane isn’t ready to go back to school on Monday? Or Tuesday? Or ever again? I’m in week 3 of a new job. My husband has a wonderfully flexible company, but there are limits. (It’s also tough on the ol’ patience to have a three year old with a Scooby fixation while you’re working on some complicated code bug.) Ugh. Anyway, Thane is eating a diet entirely comprised of constipating foods (would you like another banana?) and I’m crossing my fingers.

Which brings me to his other issue. As I mentioned, he was taken to the doctor on Wednesday for another delicate, but unrelated problem. After long soul-searching, I think it is not TOO inappropriate (or at least no more inappropriate than usual) to tell you that we’ve learned that Thane has a hydrocele. Given his age, it is not unlikely he will need the surgical remedy, since it hasn’t resolved itself and it might lead to complications if left untreated.

So here I have a little boy who’s been sick from school several days with – ahem – diarrhea (and hey, I actually wrote it out this time because this bout has been bad enough that I have FINALLY ACTUALLY learned how to spell diarrhea!) and who probably needs surgery. And yet this kid is the least sick kid around. He’s full of vim and vigor (I almost said piss and vinegar, but that’s too close to the truth…) He’s FINE. He’s bored. And he sooooo needs to go back to school on Monday!

Now, when you win a nice sum for sustainability, it seems somehow ironic to blow it all on Starbucks. And I’d just read about this ultra cool futuristic thermostat. So it was that I placed an order for a Nest.

My thermostat passes moral judgments on me

At this very moment, a highly sought after piece of cutting edge technology is sitting on my wall, lamenting that of all its beautifully designed brethren IT has to live on a wall with ’70s era dark wood paneling.

Guys, this thing is so cool. My husband is, as we speak, putting a detailed schedule in (online), including the fact that he’s gone to aikido at a certain time, etc. etc. If we make manual adjustments, it will “learn” from them and modify our schedule. It has wireless access, so you can totally change the temperature from, oh, your mobile phone. (I can forsee endless fun with this.) It tracks and monitors your power usage. It has a light sensor to see if you’re actually at home or if you left. It shows you reports on your energy usage.

Now all I have to do is paint that wall, so my ultra cool piece of technology doesn’t feel so embarrassed.

So here’s some background information. I have two boys, age six (Grey) and three (Thane). The six year old boy is a reader. The entire family loves games and books. And like most American families, we try to limit the amount of “screen time” (with varying success) and have more real life play time. Of course, like most American families we find this leads to squabbling and fighting, but hey. You can’t make an omelet without breaking any eggs…

And here are some things we like:

1) Busy Ball Bopper

Busy Ball Bopper

We’ve had ours since Grey was a year old. I personally cannot believe that through some miracle, we still also have all five original balls that came with it – that’s just a little unreal. But this is probably the only toy that’s been in constant rotation for five years. Every kid who comes to our house – chances are – ends up playing with it. And even my oh-so-sophisticated Kindergartener can still sometimes be found setting and off and playing with it. If you’re a grandparent or aunt/uncle and need just one toy in your house for a wide variety of periodically visiting children, I highly recommend this one.

Scores
Parents: B- : needs batteries, makes noise and relatively large
6 year old: B+ : Not endless fun, but experiments with air pressure add interest
3 year old: A- : Chasing balls around is fun. Also seeing if your car can go through.
1 year old: A+ : Best. Toy. Ever.

2) Imaginets

Imaginets

These were one of those toys I bought because parents must try to give their children creative and educational toys. For their part, children try to only play with toys that come from fast food meals and/or have strong marketing tie ins. My children must have overestimated the marketing budget for this toy, because they love it and they play with it all the time. Basically, it’s a set of colorful magnets in different shapes. We did 17 layers of magnetic paint on our wall, but it was still insufficient for the heavy ‘fridge magnetic toys. But it turns out perfectly for these lighter wooden shapes. The kit comes with a metal box for the magnets, so you can play “on the go”. It also comes with a bunch of patterns for kids to use. My children disdained the patterns, and have crafted their own numerous fantastic creations. In fact, my only complaint with this toy is that the boys whine when their brother destroys their latest amazing design.

It’s creative, quiet, colorful, collaborative, quasi-educational, compelling and non-messy. This toy gets my highest marks. I’m not sure it would work quite as well if you didn’t have, you know, a central wall right in the action with great exposure, but it’s definitely worth the attempt.

Scores
Parents: A+ : quiet, creative and absorbing
6 year old: A : Grey is the one who plays the most with this. He like both abstract and concrete “sculptures”
3 year old: B : I thought the patterns were too advanced for Thane, but the other day he made quite a credible happy face. He may not have the fine motor skills to draw representationally, but he can make pictures with these shapes.

Another sculpture

3) Captain Raptor

Is this the end for Captain Raptor?

I periodically get compliments from people on the books that are part of every present I give to kids. Once or twice people have asked me, “How do you find such great books?!” The answer is that I go to the library. We get about 20 books a fortnight. 18 of them are no better than ok. (And in the case of the freaking Scooby Doo readers… well, the less said about those the better…) And then one or two of them will be really good. About once every one or two months I uncover a new favorite. That’s how I discovered Captain Raptor.

Captain Raptor is freaking amazing. Basically: dinosaur astronauts in a pulp comic genre. Every third page ends with the line, “Is this the end for Captain Raptor?” I LOVE this book. There are a few more in the series that I haven’t bought yet because I’m savoring them. If you know an adventure-loving, space-loving, dino-loving kid from age 2 to 10, you should get them one of these books because they are that awesome. Alternately, if you know a parent who might consider illiteracy not really so awful after all due to having to read “Scooby Doo and the Shiny Spooky Knights” every single night for the last two years, do them a favor and give them some alternate ammunition.

Scores
Parents: A+ : Fun to read, no uncomfortable subtext, great illustrations, get to say “Is this the end for Captain Raptor” repeatedly.
6 year old: B+ : Grey still likes picture books, but doesn’t get the in-jokes. He’s not the dino/space fanatic his brother is, so while he likes this book, he’s not as enamored with it as I am.
3 year old: A : Loves the dinosaurs. Loves space. Thinks it’s incredibly silly when humans are referred to as aliens. Only prevented from reaching an A+ because it’s not Scooby Doo.

4) Scooby Doo

Scooby Doo

So Thane is obsessed with Scooby. His complete absorption in all things Mystery Inc. has not abated one whit, to my surprise. He wanders around pulling masks off people and saying, “Let’s see who it really is!” But for all my Scooby-fatigue, I think I could have done a lot worse in the obsession department. Even after wearing out several DVDs of Scooby, I still find it pretty funny when I’m in the room. It leads to fun and un-objectionable role-playing on the part of Thane. It doesn’t have the fast cuts which have been shown to not help concentration of kids. And hey, the music is actually pretty good. (You remember those chase montages?)

Scores
Parents: B : Not bad source material (as long as you avoid the atrocious “13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo”), enough stuff in the genre to spread out and be able to buy tie in materials, just a little wearying after the first 6 months.
6 year old: B : Grey prefers variety, so he gets annoyed when all his brother ever wants to watch is Scooby. Still, I think he suffers less than he would if his strong-willed sibling was obsessed with, say, Barney.
3 year old: A++++ : There is nothing in this world better than Scooby Doo.

5) Zingo

Zingo!

Playing games is part of what we do as a family. Adam and I play board or role-playing games one or two nights a week every week. Grey, now that he’s a reader, can play a relatively wide variety of games. But finding a game that all four of us can play – non-reader to experienced player – that does NOT make the adults want to gouge out their eyes or that is incredibly tedious to set up is a challenge. Zingo meets this challenge. There are cards with simple words and pictures (actually a language acquisition opportunity, since the bored parent can start pointing out the phonics of the cards to the kids). There’s a very simple mechanic for revealing the tokens. There’s no turn-taking for the impatient children. And the game is well-balanced so no one runs away with all the honors too quickly. It’s also got a mechanic that makes it easier for a grownup to throw the game (first person to call the card gets it… so you just have to be slightly slower than your three year old). This is the first game we’ve been able to play – all four of us – sitting around our kitchen table. That’s a pretty cool thing.

So how about you? Have you experienced any of the wonders listed above? What are some of the popular toys/games/books in your family? Do you have recommendations?

Then I switched jobs.

It’s funny, but so far it’s not the job that has me on my toes, it’s the commute. The bad news is that the commute is rather worse than I was hoping for. For those of you in the area, I’m trying to get from Stoneham to just south of the Children’s Museum in South Boston. The best option I’ve found so far is the 354 Express bus. It stops less than a mile from my house, and then goes directly in to State Street. From State Street it’s a mile’s walk through the city to my office. (Almost exactly. The horizontal distance is 9/10 of a mile, and then I climb five flights of stairs.) Walking, it takes me 15 – 20 minutes depending on how I catch the lights. Optimally, this would be a 40 minute commute. However, when the traffic is bad (which it often is, in my narrow survey), it can take me more than 80 minutes to get in to work. Driving, I get caught in the same traffic (although I don’t have the 20 minute walk), with the added disadvantage of not being able to take the carpool lane. The T was my first plan, but here would be all the steps in that: 1) Drive to Malden station (15 min?) 2) Park at parking lot 3) Walk from parking lot to T (5 mins), 4) Take Orange Line to Downtown Crossing? (China Town, NE Medical Center?) 5) Walk from there (.5 of a mile?). That’s a very multi stage commute, and also rather expensive, paying for parking and a T pass.

So, hrm. The good part is that when I spend 40 minutes on the bus, I get to do a lot of reading. It’s also a good napping environment (based on my comrades in bus), because there are no stops. I get off when the bus stops, along with almost everyone else. The bad thing about a bus commute is you live in constant fear of being late. That and the straight up time it takes.

With the actual job bit, I’m still in the “reading documentation” phase. I thought I’d gotten through most of the extant documentation in the company, but someone just showed me the repository where all the previous documents created by my group are kept, so I now have plenty to keep me busy. In my early analysis, however, everything seems like it should work out nicely!

Kindergarten is a bit like starting a new job, with the context switching. You are presented with new problems that your baby days had not prepared you for. For example, my son came home with a pledge form for the “Jumprope for the heart” fundraiser. I actually remember this one from MY days in grade school, back when I rode a brontosaurus to school every morning (uphill both ways barefoot!). They’ve watered it down. When I was a kid, people pledged per jump. So $.02 a jump, and then you jumped as many times as you could and ended up collecting $1.20 before you gave up. There’s no such incentive for hard work in this one, it’s just a straight “Give us money form” (now with convenient web links!). So what do I do? Do we personally just sign up for the t-shirt level? Do I offer this tremendous opportunity to the suckers, uh, I mean, grandparents of said children? Aunts and uncles? Blogosphere? What is the etiquette here… the cross between being a good PTO parent, a good citizen, and not completely obnoxious?

I still haven’t figured this one out, but would be curious what you think.

Ah well. Isn’t that how it always happens? I did not program a DROID app. I did not clean the attic. I did not finish transferring things to the new computer. I did not conquer Mt. Laundry. I did play a bunch of FABLE, do three PT session, get excused from all future knee-related work, make a gourmet meal and take care of a sick little boy.

Anyway, I’d forgotten how darn tiring newness is. Everything was new today. New routine, new kind of commute (bus! at least until the T cancel it!), new worries (will I make the bus?), new failures (didn’t have enough money on my Charlie Card because the bus is an express, forgot my Kindle and really needed to have headphones for online training but didn’t), new people, new cultural expectations. Phew. New is hard. But I think once I get past the new and into the rhythm, this is going to be a pretty cool thing! Heck, their first expectation for me was to get a fully functioning IDE up and running on my computer. Niiiiice. I’m back, folks!

He says "Scooby Doo" instead of cheese

For a week that will end in Burns night, a quote from the Bard of Scotland seems appropriate.

Let me start by saying how grateful I am that my sons now sleep through the night. I’ve realized in the last few weeks that I’ve stopped hearing them while I’m sleeping, instead of the hyper-alertness of the mother of an infant. Mmmmm sleep. (Pity my husband, who still does hear them.)

Anyway, last night my husband vaulted out of bed. In my groggy state, I couldn’t believe that morning was already here… it seemed like I’d just fallen asleep! I heard him getting Thane ready for school and wrapped my blanket more tightly around my ears, wishing he’d closed the door (like he normally does, considerate guy). (By the way, in case you ever think more highly of me than I deserve, let me assure you I’m the biggest, laziest morning-slug you’ve ever met.) Then my husband called for me.

Ugh. Really? I looked at my watch. 12:20.

Hm.

As I blinked the sleep from my eyes, I found a child covered in vomit and a husband struggling with child, bedding, etc. UGH. I’d like to take a moment to think of Grey, who may not have been potty trained by three but who got himself to the toilet/trash can to throw up nearly 100% of the time. Thane, sadly, is not so trained. Thane threw up another three times last night, every hour, just as we both fell back into deep sleep. So instead of my long list of stuff to do, I’m downstairs with a little boy who is quietly watching a personal all-day Scooby marathon. (I wonder if we have enough Scooby DVDs to watch all day long. I bet we do.)

I’m just hoping he’s well enough to go back to school tomorrow. On the one hand, I am annoyed that my precious time off is spent needing to provide childcare. On the other hand, so much more convenient when I don’t have to attempt to work or anything. On the third hand, my husband is also working from home today, and the kid has been quiet and well behaved so far. And of course finally, I love that little ScoobyDude of mine.

I have this week off. I am between. I am liminal. I have left Old Job and not yet started New Job. I have been EXPLICITLY INSTRUCTED by my new employer to relax and come in rested and refreshed. But this is a once every few years opportunity! Home, alone, without children, not terribly fiscally constrained and without obligation. This, my friends, is the holy grail. And I KNOW that it will go super duper fast and I will only accomplish a small percentage of what I intend in that time.

So here’s the potential list: (bold means already done or in the works)

Goof off in all the amazing free time.

Anyone see a problem with this list? Yeah, that darned experience tells me what it tells you. There’s no way I’m going to get through that list. I get so sick and tired of prioritizing, optimizing and being efficient. I come to loathe the down to the minute scheduling and night after night of making good decisions because I know better. This week, at least, that is relaxed and reduced. I’ve actually made some excellent progress.

The key this week, I think, is balance. I need to make sure I neither work the whole time or goof off the whole time. A mixture of accomplishment, long term investment and leisure is the order of the day. I think I’ve done well so far.

Last week I read several novels, working my way through the canon of Sherwood Smith, so far with “Crown Duel”, “The Trouble With Kings”, “Coronets and Steel” and “Blood Spirits” — thank you Kindle for making it so easy! I have played several hours of Fable II. I have gotten my DROID environment working, read half of a DROID apps book, read the first few chapters in a JAVA 2 book and consolidated all our CDs. I also cleaned out the closet in the attic and have my crazy fancy dinner planned. I bought myself my new central laptop, and am currently in the process of downloading a lifetime of pictures to it, as I simultaneously upload ancient pictures from my old desktop. I have had my final knee dr. appointment and been dismissed. I have three PT appointments scheduled. I found a new chiropractor. The dishes have been done, I’ve been careful not to spend too much time cooking (which is what usually happens when I have free time), and I’m watching Dr. Who while I fold laundry.

So far, not bad. Here’s hoping I finish equally strong, and that I’m completely energetic and ready to go back to work in my new place on Monday!

One final note… I am so a teenager. So I’ve been really careful not to get into the “staying up until 2 am reading” trap that I so easily fall into. My natural schedule is bed at 2 am and waking up around 11. I figured if I was careful with the going to bed, the waking up would come easily. But instead, I’ve had several nights where I’ve gotten 11 to 12 hours sleep. I mean, my sleep debt can’t be THAT bad, and I just had a week off for Christmas where I also caught up. I’m left to conclude that I naturally am quite happy sleeping half the time. And it’s not depression – I’m quite cheerful. I just like bed. This explains a lot.

Not so bad.

]]> http://mytruantpen.com/2012/01/17/pack-in-that-relaxation/feed/ 2 bflynn http://mytruantpen.com/2012/01/14/momento-mori/ http://mytruantpen.com/2012/01/14/momento-mori/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:25:31 +0000 bflynn http://mytruantpen.com/?p=2026 Continue reading »

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An angel of the sea with a broken anchor

I’ve always loved graveyards. I remember being six and going to the graveyard overlooking Bonners Ferry, and thinking how lovely it was. I am particularly fond of older graveyards. I have taken many a happy walk through graveyards. In fact, I walked through graveyards during labor with both my sons (different graveyards). I love the quiet and peace of a cemetary. I enjoy reading the headstones and wondering about the relationship and lives of the remembered. I’m particularly fond of gravestones that hold some message for those left behind to read.

In the oldest New England graveyards, in New London, for example, the messages can be downright depressing – about how the inhabitant of the grave is in hell and if you aren’t more careful you will be too. One of my favorite classes in college was “Death, Dying and the Dead”, in which I learned that the whole purpose of the “pastoral graveyard” (of which Mt. Auburn in Cambridge is a prime example, and Arlington National Cemetery another) was to invite the living to remember the temporary status of their condition.

Anyway, with bright and fair weather, I took a walk to our local graveyard. It is no Mt. Auburn, granted. It sits high on a hill overlooking a Dunkin’ Donuts and used sports equipment store. It is the second oldest graveyard in town. The town was founded in 1725, so we have had significant history to bury. The oldest graveyard is next to the YMCA childcare center, but we aren’t permitted to wander there because it is (apparently) unsafe. (I imagine falling through an unstable burial chamber, and complain only a little.) This cemetery – Lindenwood – is also not the Catholic Cemetery. That’s further down the road. Lindenwood dates back to the early 1800s. A small stream runs picturesquely through, in a wooded glade at the bottom of the hill. The hallowed ground holds the remains two young brothers, whose mother updates their shared tombstone regularly. There’s a congressional medal of honor winner (WWII, by the dates). One of the last heroes of the now-nearly-forgotten Spanish American war lies there. In a few places, rings of white marble with initials surround large and imposing monuments, marking the final resting place of families. Sometimes this dignified white marble is marked with “Mom” and “Dad” – no names.

In this recent trip, I found quite possibly the creepiest tombstone EVER. Usually, as I tell myself stories about the people lying here (and perhaps more interestingly, the people who stood at their funerals), I can imagine what they were thinking when they made the choices they made. They decorate grandma’s grave with Christmas ornaments because she always went overboard at Christmas. The 30 year old who died in the 80s, but whose tombstone shows an infant going to God? Perhaps he was severely Downs Syndrome and his parents never saw him as a grown man. But I cannot for the life of me fathom what was going through the mind of the relations who placed this marble monument:

At the bottom it says, "Watching and waiting"

I can’t think of a single non-creepy interpretation of that one. It’s straight out of a Stephen King novel.

So how about you? Avoid cemeteries at all costs? Like to wander them? Find it morbid? What’s the creepiest you’ve ever seen? And what possible non-freaky interpretation could there be of Cora’s tomb?

]]> http://mytruantpen.com/2012/01/14/momento-mori/feed/ 2 bflynn An angel of the sea with a broken anchor At the bottom it says, "Watching and waiting" http://mytruantpen.com/2012/01/12/hello-world/ http://mytruantpen.com/2012/01/12/hello-world/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:30:59 +0000 bflynn http://mytruantpen.com/?p=2021 Continue reading »

]]> A bit of background is probably in order, before I launch into my most recent adventure. Despite being a language-oriented person, I somehow stumbled into a career in web application development. No one was more surprised by this than I was, but the year was 2000. Even more to my surprise, I turned out to be a pretty good developer. My favorite part is database development (SQL/datastructures), but I’m also strong through the middle tier and display layer in a dissed programming language called Coldfusion. Javascript and I have an uneasy truce much relieved by the introduction of packages like jQuery and PrototypeJS. I spent 10 years as a full time developer.

But I always thought to myself, “I have a windy tongue! I am a people person! I therefore cannot really be a coder.” And so I got a job that used all my people skillz and none of my technology skillz. I thought with a pang at how hard I’d worked, but this seemed the way to go.

Now I’m leaving that job, and going to one where I will be much, much closer to the technology. My new boss already sent me the APIs, and I’m extremely and muchly excited to get back to technology – much to my surprise! I mean, who knew I really like code and technology and programming?

In the lull between jobs, in addition to reading novels, taking naps, and cleaning the attic… I thought I would crack open the ol’ development tools and remind myself of the problems and delights of code, if only for a few days.

So our heroine began here: http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

Here’s a secret: the very hardest part of starting to do development (if you are not already a developer) is getting your development environment up and running. I mean, I am a programmer and the computer I’m working on used to be my dev environment. But I needed a new version of Eclipse (free & not so hard), a JDK (very very hard – I have a 32 bit Windows computer and you have to KNOW which JDK will work for a 32 bit computer and everyone who writes stuff for programming assumes that you have this perfectly obvious to them piece of knowledge and Google was failing me and I even ordered a new computer because then I could get 64 bit Windows and plus I need a new computer anyway but its not here yet and my time is running out and my husband who is of the programming cognoscenti finally helped me identify a sufficiently up to date version of the JDK I could install – but it still took several days) and the Android SDK. And you have to pray that you configured them all correctly so they can talk.

GOOGLE KEYWORD BREAK TO HELP THE NEXT SCHMO:
What is the right JDK if I have 32 bit Windows?
The right JDK for 32 bit Windows users is Windows x86.
(http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javasebusiness/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javase6-419409.html)
Windows x86 76.81 MB jdk-6u29-windows-i586.exe
Windows 32 bit JDK for JDK 6.0 is Windows x86
END GOOGLE KEYWORD BREAK

(I mean, isn’t it perfectly obvious that you need x86 if you have 32 bit Windows? No? Yeah, not for me either.)

Once you’ve done all that, three lines of code take a base application and turn it into “Hello World.” With no further ado, I give you:

Hello World!

Yay! I have an app in mind (A Christmas list manager, to help you figure out who you’re buying for, what your budget is and how you’re doing vs. budget. Also to help you so you have equal number of presents per child and do not find a bag of presents in your closet a month later… WHICH I JUST DID.) I do not believe this app will take the app world by storm, but at least it’s a quasi useful something to work on with a very simple first stage and a lot of opportunity for me to muck around. Actually, in all truth, I do not believe I will ever finish this app but I MIGHT! And if I did, I could actually use it.

Now all I have to do is figure out what mobile app developers use instead of databases. I’ve spent my entire professional life clinging tightly to databases, but I think it’s different out here in the wild wild west. I need to figure out a whole new paradigm for display – I’m REALLY hoping it’s easier to make an average looking app than it is an average looking website. I am not so good at making pretty stuff online. Also, DROID app development is based on JAVA, and I’m not really a JAVA programmer. I mean, some of my best friends are JAVA and all. Coldfusion is written in JAVA and some of the advanced development is more or less JAVA… and I took a class on JAVA 2 in college which introduced stuff like inheritance… but yeah. I’m not a JAVA developer.

But hey. I got my development environment working after five days of intermittent effort, so how hard can the rest be?

Now that the half of you who are my developer buddies are rolling your eyes at my naivete and the other half of you who read for cute kid anecdotes are completely lost, I will leave you there. Because the next stage is to use XML to handle my layout instead of doing it directly in the JAVA. Ooooooohhhhh…..

Yours in supreme geeky bliss,

Me

]]> http://mytruantpen.com/2012/01/12/hello-world/feed/ 1 bflynn Hello World!