Training trees to drop their leaves correctly

Our trees at the end of their training

After 12 years of training, these two maple trees have finally been trained to drop their leaves right around the trunk. It was a struggle. I should have kept pictures throughout the years so you could see when the trees just dropped their leaves straight down and how it has gotten better each year as I trained them to steer the leaves so that they drop right around the trunk. This makes the leaves much easier to pick up to put in a garden trailer for moving to our huge leaf pile in the back yard.

The hard part turned out to be training the trees NOT to drop their leaves on windy days. The wind makes everything more difficult. So, it's better to just train the trees to stop dropping leaves when the wind is blowing over 10 miles an hour. Below that, the trees seem to be able to still aim the leaves in the correct direction.

The other good thing about the leaves bunched up around the trunk is that when wind speed does get high (this is Cape Cod after all and the wind regularly reaches speeds of 20 - 30 miles per hour on a normal day and higher on a stormy day), the trunk seems to hold the leaves and keep them from dispersing.

So, even though this has been a wet year (it was one of the wettest years we've ever had) and there were a lot more leaves, these trained tree leaves are all gone now. Perhaps you'd like to know how I did this. I used the same methods to train the trees as I used to build this bridge - which I can let you have for a very good price!

Merry Christmas

I hope you are having a merry Christmas. My family and I are enjoying ours but it is not an easy time. My mother-in-law has dementia and my wife is both upset by the effect of that disease on her mother and is worn out by taking care of her. My mother-in-law lives with us in a separate part of the house. In fact, she is living in the original house she and her husband (who dies about 17 years ago) built almost 60 years ago. About 12 years ago, we added on to her house for our own house and we have a connecting door so it's easy for us to help her. When she was first diagnosed, it wasn't too bad. But in the last two years, we've seen a sharp decline in her ability to remember. Now, she sometimes doesn't recognize us and has trouble remembering where things are in her house. She has to be constantly reminded where the bathroom is and that she is living in her own home. She will often hallucinate that other people are in her house (although we think this may be from seeing something on the TV).

But beyond that, we have had a good Christmas. And, of course, the central reason for our celebrating Christmas remains - a child was born of a virgin in Bethlehem who was God with us. He is Christ the Lord and his joy and salvation remain. He helps us and loves us. We do have medical aides who come in to sit with my mother-in-law while my wife gets a break. She has health insurance so she can afford most things she needs.

The picture at the top is not only a picture of an abundance of holly berries on a tree in our backyard. It is also an example of renewal and hope. In the spring of this year, this holly tree lost a large portion of its leaves. They were turning yellow with large brown spots and then falling off in huge numbers. I was worried that the tree was dying. But later in the summer, an equal (or greater) number of new leaves appeared. The tree is doing better than ever and I've never seen more berries on this tree. You can click on the picture to show it full sized.

I was reading an article about a new treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's Disease that will soon be moving to human trials. This link to New Atlas has the article. The two best parts of this, to me, are:

1. This is not a new drug but an ultrasound treatment so there aren't as many worries about side affects
2. This treatment actually reverses the effects of the disease

So, while this is a terrible disease, there is still hope. May we all have hope in the future. If you know Jesus as your personal savior, you do have that hope.

On Vacation

I'm taking a vacation that has a been a while coming. Having worked at this company for 30 years, I get a lot of leave but I haven't been able to take as much as I'd like. I've built up enough leave to lose some because we can only retain up to 200 hours of vacation leave (and another 200 hours of sick leave). After that, it just disappears.

For one thing, the projects I'm working on still need a lot of work. Even though the main project I work on is over 16 years old, and there are newer options for some of its features, it still needs to be updated from time to time. And I am the only person actively working on the code so if I take time off, no work gets done on this product. Whenever we need to release a newer version, we have to scramble to find an available testing engineer because they are all busy on newer or developing projects. We've done six releases of my product in the last two years. I'm not just the developing engineer but I'm the build engineer, too. And when especially hard problems come in to our Tech Support department, I pitch in to help on those, too. I used to have to run the project, too, but now we have someone to organize the meetings and coordinate between engineering, production and marketing.

For another thing, as I get older (I'm 67 years old) I find it harder and harder to get things done. If I take time off, it means it takes me a while to get back into the swing of things when I return. The younger engineers seem to be light on their feet. They look through multiple ways of solving a problem and seem to be able to find the best solution quickly. I plod along looking through the existing code for the problem or to find a way to include a new feature and then struggle with the solution. Part of the problem is that I don't want to make major changes to a product that has worked well for so long. Also, you don't want to change how something works when customers are used to it working that way. Change for change's sake is no way to improve a product.

I'm also part of a new, exciting project that will eventually entirely replace the old project I'm working on but there is a long way to go on it so the old project must be kept going. I like working on this old project. It's nice to be able to get a request from a customer and fit it into the the existing framework without slowing down the existing program or making it harder to use. It's like adding rooms and passages and stairways to an existing building without annoying existing users or making them stop using it while we work to improve it. We just pull back a curtain every few months and say, "Look what we've added," or, "Look what we fixed." A smooth transition to a better version of the existing product is a joy that keeps me going.

Don't forget to look around

Click to see the larger view

The screen saver on one of my less-used computers at work has a changing view of my old photos and the one here just came up. It reminded me of an earlier post from this year called Sometimes you need to take your eye OFF the ball. That post revolved around a funny story of someone taking a picture of his daughter with a celebrity and missing the fact that another celebrity was there, too.

In our picture, taken back in 2004, my family was so intent on getting a picture by this elf statue that they didn't notice that the man himself (we were at Santa's Village in Jefferson New Hampshire) was walking by. We'd see him later so it was no big deal but it just stuck me again how easy it is to miss important things around us. We get so intent on doing mundane things that we miss the wonders and miracles around us. Especially this time of year. We all have goals and for many of us it is preparing for Thanksgiving or buying gifts for Christmas or getting a project done at work. We focus on those things and miss the things not associated with the trip to the finish line. Nothing I am saying is new and you know it better than I do. I'm just writing this now because I was reminded of it just now. I'm not going to change your life or your mind - unless this reminds you of it now, too.

I'm going to be writing a post soon about another distraction we face and how it can have a more serious result.

One of the things I especially enjoy about riding my scooter to work is that I have a much better view of the road and the surroundings. I see more things. Partly because I have the better view but also because I am forced to notice things around me - my health is at stake if I miss a car coming at me. Yes, it was freezing this morning but I dressed warmly and scooted in. I find I am more alert and ready to go when I arrive at work. Sitting in a car lets you relax and remain less alert. Listening to the radio is the only real plus to driving the car to work. Well, that and not getting wet in the rain!

Everything is easy...

I wrote a comment on another blog where the post was about a change that forced the blog writer to change their schedule. The blog writer said that some people might question how hard it really was to simply change his schedule. Well, that made me think.

Very often at work, someone will come along with an idea for a change to the software projects I work on. More times than not, the suggestion will come with the line, "This should be an easy change." Nothing drives me crazy quite like that line does. I usually give one of two answers to this:

1. "If it is that easy, you shouldn't have any trouble doing it."
2. "Everything is easy when you don't have to do it."

That second answer is my favorite because you can take it two way.

One way puts the emphasis on "you" as in, "Everything is easy when  you don't have to do it." In other words, since I am doing this and you are not doing this, it's easy for you to say it will be easy because you will not be taking the time to look into all the possible problems it will cause or at all the difficulties we may find in accomplishing this.

The other way to look at the second answer is in questioning whether this should even be done. If there is no reason to change the behavior or add a feature, then it is easier to just not do it.

Too many things are done just because someone thinks a new feature is needed. This not only adds complexity for no reason. It also makes the project just a little bit harder to maintain or fix in the future.

Nothing improves if no one complains

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No one likes a complainer. Especially someone who acts like no one has it as hard as they do. Some people act like the world is against them and use every opportunity to let you know. But those people are rare and I think that, eventually, they get the idea that they are not endearing themselves to anyone with their constant complaints.

But on the other hand, as I've said frequently:

Nothing improves if no one complains

So, it's a fine line - if you see something wrong, you need to know how to complain but in addition, you need to know how to help. And sometimes, complaining so other people can hear you is useful. Not all the time but sometimes. Like yesterday.

The network administrators for our company made an announcement a few weeks ago that they were going to tighten the rules on the passwords we use to log into our computers and get access to the company network. They said too many people were using simple passwords and we all had to start using longer and more complex passwords. We all forgot about it. Until yesterday.

All of a sudden, the program I use to prepare one of our major applications started to fail. I traced it down to the part where it tries to copy the updated application to the network so everyone can use it. I contacted the administrators and they reminded me about the new rules for passwords. "Well," I said, "this program is only used internally and no one else has access to it but me. Why should that need a new, fancier password?"It turns out the rules were not that flexible. All passwords needed to be upgraded. This meant I had a lot of work to do because this password was embedded in a number of smaller programs that prepared and loaded our application. It took me half the day but I finally did it.

But I couldn't just drop it. I had to make a big production of it and did a little hand waving and story telling to make sure everyone knew how hard I'd worked and how distressed I was! But in the end, it helped. Another engineer was having a similar problem and didn't know what the cause was. One of the fellows sitting near me had heard my tirade and mentioned to the other engineer what I'd been complaining about. The other engineer came to me to ask more about the problem and, sure enough, his problem was the same as mine. He would have been stuck for a longer time if our intermediary hadn't connected my rant with the other engineer's problem.

So sometimes, it's worth getting a little mad and maybe even getting a little too loud about an injustice. Something useful might just come out of it.

You can have it all

"Having it all," is a phrase we've all heard over the years. It was usually used for the growing number of women getting jobs while they were also taking care of children or were thinking of having children. In the past, the phrase implied, women had to choose between having a career or starting a family. But now, they were free to "have it all". They could balance the time it took for work and for the family. It was nice that this freedom was available but it missed a few troubling things. For one, there was also an increase in stress. The women doing this were not magically given more time in the day to handle all of this. In some circumstances, the woman's husband would step up and help with more of the family side of the equation. Good luck with that.

The other thing this phrase misses is that this was not new. It has been going on for centuries. For women with children who lose their husband, there is no choice. They have to do it all - all the time. The same goes for single women who have children and the man doesn't follow through and marry her or help raise the children. These women have it all for sure  - all the responsibility, all the worry, all the time.

Then this morning in church, we were singing a song called You Can Have it All, Lord. Our pastor had just preached a sermon on John 13:1-11 where Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. Jesus has to explain to them that they cannot wash his feet. He must wash their feet to cleanse them. It is grace that he is talking about. No matter the problems we have, the troubles we cause, the sins we have committed. Jesus takes it all and forgives us. Now, he "has it all". It's hard to imagine but that's the way it works. There is nothing we can do to deserve it. It's his free gift to us.

Having it all could mean you're having all the problems. It could mean having all the worry. But we can give it all to Jesus and the freedom is wonderful. In this case, having it all is a choice but in the reverse. It's more "giving it all" and then receiving salvation.

Here is the link to our pastor's message. He says much better than I can.