Asa Jay's weblog

Yea, it finally happened. Sam said bye-bye to me this morning as I left for work. After several months of both Shelley and I prompting him with bye-bye’s of our own, he finally got it. It was a proud a moment, since I’ve not been able to make out any other words from him to date.

Sam is going on two and a half years old right now. We have other friends with kids about the same age, and they are already talking. I remember Sam’s 18-month checkup with his pediatrician, who said he should be up to 18 words at that point; Sam didn’t speak one, but he knew and could understand many. It’s been a point of worry for me, Sam not talking. He mostly blabbers in unintelligble, meaningless ways. We’ve tried getting him to say “please” and “thank you”, or perhaps even “diaper” when he needs a change. It all seems in vein, until today.

We’ve been told that many kids don’t start speaking until later, and then, they usually start in almost complete sentences. I still worry about Sam, and his ability to speak. Today though, seemed to usher a small breakthrough. As I was putting on my coat and giving Shelley a kiss, we both said it was time for daddy to go bye-bye, and Sam, as usual, came over to the stairs to wave good-bye and blabber something. This time however, he simply said buh-bye. Containing my excitement, I simply looked at him and said “that’s right, buh-bye”, and we kept repeating it back and forth as I descended the stairs.

It may not be much, but it’s a start. It may not be long before I wish he’d -stop- talking.

Asa Jay

. . . I don’t write enough.

I’ve had this blog up for months now; somewhere around seven months I think. I guess part of the problem with just the blogging part, is that I was just changing jobs, or rather, I was switching from working with one company, to working with another. The transition took a lot of my time, and energy. Then, things got brutal at work.

My manager ended up quitting, probably because he started to see he might be fired. Our lead RF engineer left, and most recently, our Lead Software Architect left. Bummers all. I had wished to start mentoring under someone new, but it didn’t work out. Oh well.

I am again on my own, with no mentor. Not that I’m struggling; there is simply -no- leadership in our office. Partly that’s not a bad thing, as we all do our part as a team. The problem is that our Project Manager and other lead people are in an office all the way across the country. We are mushrooms.

But I digress. I think too much, I don’t write enough. I used to. In fact, I used to write more than I read. I have some stuff on line here at asajay.com. I’ve put up some of the poems I wrote long ago. I have many short stories as well. I only tried to get published once or twice. You see, I know I’m not -that- good. I used to write for my own enjoyment. It was like playing with LEGO.

With Lego, in the early days, you were presented with bricks. The imagination had to create, and using the bricks helped you bring the imagination into reality or least “play reality”. Eventually, through High School, I started writing as new way to bring my imagination to life. I would write, read, re-write, read, put on a shelf. I still have most everything I ever wrote in High School, and College. Oh, to me it was good, but again, not worth publishing. I’ve not really written in years though.

I was writing just as personal computers got started. I worked with a TRS-80 Model I, in Algebra class at first. Later, as a teachers aid, I moved up to a TRS-80 Model II which only certain teachers (and teachers aids) could use. I eventually talked my parents into buying a Tandy 1000EX. I thought using a computer would help me write.

I took a typing class as part of my senior year. I thought I would need to learn how to type, and perhaps how to type quickly, if I was ever to satisfy this urge to write. I passed second in my class at well over 40 words a minute. Today, on a good day, I can clear almost 80 words a minute. Pretty cool; not the fastest, but pretty darn good.

The fastest typist I ever knew, was one of the admins at our high school. She could type upwards of 200 words a minute. Using an IBM Selectric II, it sounded like automatic weapons fire when you passed by the office.

So I figured computers were going to allow me to type all my stories, poems and what-not. The sad reality was, the more I worked to get into computers, the less I wrote. Eventually, I forgot about writing atogether. It would only come in small spurts, like every 10 years. Not cool.

Today, I don’t seem to have the same imagination that I used to. Today, I get my imagination “fix” by watching other peoples imaginations come alive on TV. Blah. Movies, TV shows and books influenced my early writing; sparing my imagination to new ideas. Now though, it’s not the same. I feel tired, and I shouldn’t. It’s almost like I’ve lost that fire. I almost feel as if all the great stories have been told; anything new is just a re-hash of something old. The themes are the same, but the names, time, and places have changed.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve thought more about PC Game storylines, rather than books or short stories. Myst got me started. Then, I became facinated with history, and mystery. I’ve had some decent ideas for computer games, but again, I’ve never writting much down, and wouldn’t even know where to pitch.

At some point, I needed to make money, to live. Having a title published was not a big goal, but now, as I’m older, I realize that if I take time out of my life to write something, I should be paid to do it. Since I already understand I’m not good enough to publish, I know it’s not going to put food on my table. So I don’t write much. I sure think a lot though.

There was the one time I had a killer multi-million dollar idea. Oh it was good, I remember that much. I thought out so much, I thought it all through, design, manufacture, sales, everything. But I was tired, it was late, I went to bed and never wrote a stickin’ thing down. To this day, I regret it; t othis day, I still can’t remember what the idea was.

I’ve had at least three separate adventure game ideas. I wrote down a little, but that’s as far as it got. Oh, I’ve thought plenty of things through, but just haven’t written any of it down.

I lost a girlfriend once, because I think too much. I analyzed too much, I read too much into things. I just couldn’t leave things be. Too much of a “thinker”, and it lost a great woman.

I think a lot, I just don’t write things down.

I think too much.

Asa Jay

This entry is a quick entry to show a friend how a blog works.

Change is difficult, but change can be good.

After almost 10 years with my present employer, I am moving on to a new job with a new company. Itron, Inc. has been a great company to work for. I am leaving just shy of 10 years by about 10 days. My first manager there was a kind gentleman who gave me plenty of opportunity to learn, grow and understand my own limitations and interests.

Unfortunately, over the past few years, opportunities have dwindled as the company has grown. I have felt stagnated in my present job, and frankly, I had a project manager that was pissing me off. Although the amount of work in progress appears to be huge, there just doesn’t seem to be any specific direction. It’s kind of like working in a situation where all the people are like chickens with their heads cut off.

Now don’t get me wrong. Itron has some great products, and they provide some great services for the Utility Industry. For me, they’ve simply grown too big and the focus is on way too many products.

I like to focus on one or two things. I like to work across the entire engineering department, with all the different engineers. I like to make sure the company is working toward a quality product for the customer; a product that will experience few returns; one the customer thinks is the best out there and causes them little if any problems. But when I end up with a Project Manager who appears to have a focus of simply getting a design into the hands of the customer, without regard for engineering support, I have a problem.

The last project I worked on was pretty exciting for me. It was a new opportunity to work with eveyone again and help make a good quality product. But darned if that PM just didn’t give us enough prototype product material to really find all the problems. Not only that, but many of his decisions for vendors, locked us in to bad product, which put us behind the eight ball to find a new vendor very quickly. It’s difficult to do those kinds of things.

It was driving me crazy.

A friend of mine recently was offered a new job at a company here in Spokane. After a couple of emails, it sounded like they could use a person with my skills. A phone call, application and resume, and I was asked to come in for an interview. After that, I was offered a job. Being one who believes in taking advantage of opportunities like this, I accepted.

So now, I’m scared, or perhaps anxious. I’m being given a lot to do, and I start in a just a few days. I gave Itron a two week notice a while back, and it’s worked out very well. I’ve tried to document my job and help transition things to other people. So far, so good.

I’m leaving a lot of good folks, but I’m not abandoning the relationships. These are folks I might want to come back to work for in the future. Most are happy to see me find something a bit more challenging. Some are very sad I am leaving, because I help make thier job bearable. I’ve taken business cards from almost everyone I work with. I may need to give them a call sometime for advice.

So things are changing, again. I pray the next 10 years, will be as great as the last.

Asa Jay

I’m engaged in a clandestine experiment which is not netting the results I’ve been looking for. Of course, it may be that it’s going to take some time and I really should be patient. But then again, I thought better of it today, and figured I might be able to give it a helping hand.
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So I’ve implemented a small trick, similar to many others commonly used. It’s sleek, it’s stealthy, you may not even know it’s there. I’ll let it run this way for a while and see if it yields any results in the next month or so. I will be greatly excited if it does.

Watch this space for further results.

Asa Jay