January fifth begins the Earth’s fifth revolution as it enter into yet another journey around the sun. Until exactly three years ago, January 5th never really had much meaning to me.
Three years ago today was a Friday. The Sunday before was new year’s eve 2017. It was a very cold night for Baton Rouge—no doubt below freezing. Keith and I spent our first low-key New Year’s Eve together (the previous four had been more on the party side). We went to see the movie Downsizing, followed by or perhaps immediately after two melted pots of cheese into which we dipped apples & bread at the Melting Pot, which no longer exists here in Baton Rouge.
After these events, we went home, snuggled up on the couch under a blanket with some hot tea, and watched the new year’s Twilight Zone marathon. At midnight, we kissed and wished each other a happy new year. Just before 12:01AM, both our phones went off that Poseidon had just gone down.
This struck me oddly as one of my favorite movies is Poseidon (or the Poseidon adventure), which is exactly this premise—the ship called Poseidon capsizes just after midnight on new year’s. Odd.
Moments later, we both get follow up texts saying that the rest of the plant is now down due to freezing temperatures—there’s often a lot of moisture in the plant air that feeds the pneumatic controls. This moisture can build up and freeze, which leads to interlocks enabling within the control system forcing a safety shutdown.
Keith & I sighed and wished we hadn’t had our phones on us as what was supposed to be our relaxing new year’s day holiday was just cancelled: as unit & maintenance supervisors/superintendents, we were both expected to be at the plant no later than 6am, and right now would be better.
It was going to be a long, hard week, but for me, there was a light at the end of that tunnel—a break. The next morning, i climbed 13 decks of frozen, massive-icicle ridden stairs to scrutinize the relief valves and other equipment of the Poseidon unit. I withstood the freezing gusts of winds on top of our clarifier as my operators and i devised a plan to get sufficient polymer into our waste water to allow the solids to settle. I was there without complaint and diligently worked from dawn til dusk every freezing day until Thursday.
On Thursday, January 4th, 2018, i rapidly finished up all my todos that piled up with the freeze, and left at around 3PM to make my final 4PM doctor appointment. All was good. The baby was still breech, and we were set for the morning.
From there I went to meet my parents at their hotel where Keith showed up also. We all went down to the lobby to await his parents as well. We went to a nice hibachi dinner where i had filet & scallops (you know, something light the night before major surgery). Then Keith & I went home, and i guess we went to bed.
I’m not really sure how I slept that night, but i do know i had to be up by 5AM with my bags packed to be at the hospital by 6AM in order to be prepped for surgery by 8AM.
At 807AM, I heard the most surreal sound suddenly making it all real—I heard him cry. Moments later, his face was held up to mine forehead to chin. I rubbed his nose with mine, exclaimed “oh! He’s cute!” And then told him, “you can call me mom.”
Today that little boy is 3, and he still makes my world go round.
As for coding, today i made progress. I’m glad i asked about what I was doing, because go figure, i was doing it wrong. In fact, what I was doing last week and commented out, was in fact correct. Somehow last Thursday, i got confused and thought i was supposed to get the actual GUI to run in the web, but that’s not the case. I’m just supposed to implement the game within a web GUI—that is so much easier…
So i undid everything i undid the other day, and drew the board. Now I’m trying to figure out how to click the boxes. The game runs, but gets stuck at draw-board. For my task this week, that should actually be a fairly simple task to fix with a nil so that the rest of the game runs.
All in all, a productive day and I think I’m on track for meeting iteration this week.
Rex:
We went bowling for his birthday—and had pizza. I don’t think there has ever been a happier boy. It was amazing to see how much he has changed from bowling last year though. He was able to carry the ball all by himself this time, position it on the dragon ramp, and roll it to the pins.
Leo: Leo bowled too. He had fun and cheered after rolling the ball down the alley.