Insanity coming to a close

It has been a crazy 9-10 months. This is just a summary of the many things that have gone on or been worked on.

• Moved wife and kids into an apartment in Florida with as many belongs as would fit. This took a couple trips.
• Put kids in brick & mortar school
• Put house up for sale - assuming would find job in Florida.
• After 5 weeks we put both kids in Florida virtual school for all but one class each. So wife drops kids off at school each day for 1 class.  The Florida virtual school, Hillsborough county virtual school and Hillsborough county regular school all tell you different things  regarding enrollment and other requirements - sigh. At any rate, kids are 5+ weeks behind with the switch.
• Job hunted from Virginia for nearly a month.
• Packed house into a POD storage unit and shipped to Florida. Moved a few belongings to mother in-laws house.
• Picked one of 2 jobs I had offers from.
• Had to leave travel trailer at house in VA initially
• Moved self and some more belongings to FL apt with family.
• Got braces for daughter - about a year later than we had planned due to waffling on move for a while.
• Moved travel trailer to storage area at apartment - has roof leak so had to cover with tarp (which promotes mold ..).
• House hunted and hunted
• Wife had cataract surgery done on both eyes
• Bought house - now we have 2 houses and an apartment
• Sold travel trailer at large loss. It may have fit in side yard but not comfortably and would have caused some problems.
• Had another kidney stone.  Number 7?  Maybe higher.  Had expensive ride to hospital this time - wife and family were all well over an hour way (probably 2+) at the time.  Hopefully be a couple years before another (at worst).
• Sold VA house
• Moved everything from apartment to new house.
• Still haven't got son his drivers license - he isn't in a hurry and traffic here is crazy at times.
• New house has many "minor" needs
• Main breaker went bad on day 1 (likely related to transition of power).  
• Dryer exhaust run is wacky and long - new dryer shuts off thinking that the exhaust is blocked. I need to install an external dryer vent booster such as this.  Still researching.
• Lots of light bulbs out.  Replacing everything with LED lights.
• Master bath vent broken.
• Haven't gotten around to trying the jet tub yet.  Not sure if it works.
• Fan/light fixture in front bedroom has bad light sockets. Will use master bedroom fixture + new light.
• Dining room switch got very hot - fixture using too high of wattage incandescent bulbs. Installed new dimmer with dedicated on/off and LED bulbs - now fine.
• Wiring in house is odd; number of breakers just labelled "lights" but no indication of room or scope.  Looks like some outlets are on same breaker as major appliances.  Mapping out what is on each breaker.
• 12 x 16 shed has hole in roof, floor and it full of roaches, etc.  Tore it down - took to landfill (approx 6k lbs of junk).  Wired off of water heater.  Will replace with metal building (soon I hope). 
• "Office" was built with no permit and needs lots of work to make usable and code compliant.  This is longer term project.  Office exterior door frame is rotted and termite damaged (long ago it appears).
• A number of other outlets and switches needed replacement. Started to replace those.
• Not efficient use of storage areas - putting in rubbermaid/closetmaid rails/wire shelving in pantry, laundry area, etc. This helped a lot.
• Used closetmaid rails and brackets and some wood to make decent adjustable desks and shelving for my kids.
• Master bath - one sink has leaking drain line.  On todo list - only using other sink.
• Kitchen cabinet shelves were "droopy" - added some 1x2 to back side to straighten/strengthen them.
• Exterior ends of house need to have some wood patched where rot occurred.
• Fence around back yard is falling down just about everywhere - need to talk with neighbors once we straighten more important stuff out.
• Pool needs to be refinished at some point - gunnite is worn away in many places.
• Master bedroom lacks light on ceiling fan.  I've got a new fan/light and am still trying to work on replacing it.  The ceiling fan fixture box was undersized and ceiling joist layout is odd there - access is only from the room unless I shrink a lot. Just need to take some time and work through it.
• Microwave trim pieces cracked and fell off.. need to degrease and epoxy.
• All carpet in house needs to go.  There is carpet throughout the master bathroom and it is in poor shape.  Looking into options now.
• Motorcycle lost one of 2 cylinders one night while going from apt back to house and got caught in a rain storm.  Assuming water got to wiring or plugs but have no time to fix - might try new plugs and some dielectric goop to seal plugs better; saw that online from some others.  Was fun riding along at ~60 (in 65/70 zone) at full throttle on one cylinder when 2nd cylinder would "kick in" for 20 seconds or so.  
• Replaced car brake pads; a dealer commented on them but didn't say how bad.  I think they were looking for an easy buck at that time.  I purchased and held some brake pads and rotors for about 3 months until I had time to deal with.  Pads still had 5k or so life left and rotors are not too bad.  The pads I purchased (correctly based upon model) turned out to be wrong - looks like during the major model change they switched to the brake system off the larger/heavier model they retired.  I replaced the pads only this time - next time I'll put on the rotors (if they are the correct ones.. sigh).
• Got truck in for a couple oil changes.  Didn't intend to drive "Herbie Jr" aka "Duckinator" that much but between rain and motorcycle issue..
• Finally have dentist and family practice doctor; working through catching up on all our "maint" work. I'm thinking I will need to have some work done on one knee again - all this moving took a toll.
• Had one gerbil (Shadow) die.
• My father is working on building us some book cases (a big thanks to my family) - we have a significant number of books and stuff is just stacked in boxes on their sides right now..  That should clean up much of the tornado look.
• Work has had a number of challenges - lots of new things to learn which is nice but also some other things that have been less nice.  Hoping things improve.
• Got a good chunk of the new house paid off with proceeds from old house - new payment is much nicer.  Big sigh of relief..
• Need to plan out a car for son.  Maybe a hybrid would be better around here. Still researching.

I'm sure I forgot a bunch of stuff  but this gives you an idea - it has been busy to say the least.

[Edit 2017/07/05]  Adding on painful plumbing job.  Toilet was running more and more.  Made best guess on replacement kit of internals - guessed wrong.  Had to guess because toilet shutoff valve would not shut off.  The valve was very close to wall so I was trying to avoid cutting but after a long attempt at removing without damage it was obvious the compressing fitting was tightened to the point of squashing the tube.  I finally cut it off, took out some drywall to give some room and had some issues with the torch as I tried to solder in a short extension.  All my last 15-20 years of soldering had been either overhead or flat I guess - my torch was not producing an even flame when tilted so low and even with 2 soldering blankets I ended up torching some paper backing in the wall (maybe related to stucco work - not sure). A little fast patting put out the flame fortunately.  I did have the fire extinguisher sitting there but it would have been overkill slightly.  I'm planning on a torch head with a hose for any future work.  Good news is my solder joint was good and my install of the new 1/4 turn valve was successful.  Bad news is that the 2nd toilet repair kit I picked up was the right size but missing a critical part (that I of course cut apart/off the old toilet since it was stuck). Another run to Lowes it was.  Eventually it all came together but it wasn't a restful holiday weekend. All this was combined with trying to organize a room for an office along with the garage which looks like a tornado moved in.  It is getting there but.. note to self.. don't move oneself again.. hire a company.  Sigh, I also just found this "Hexpander" tool - would have saved me hours of time and probably made the job very pain free if it works as well as demonstrated.  Not sure I do enough of this to warrant it but if I ever have to help my kids with some similar plumbing..

Everything is in the house at least.. many praises for that.

Psalm 127:1English Standard Version (ESV)

127 Unless the Lord builds the house,
    those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the watchman stays awake in vain.

Bleeding edge Angular

Are you doing either "bleeding" or "leading" edge Angular 2?

If you say yes as of recently (today is June 1, 2017) then I would have to question it.  Angular is now at version 4.x and the published release plan indicates another major release this year.  The plan says there should be major releases every 6 months or so.

Are you creating production apps?  I have to question the wisdom of that right now unless you either have a large set of dedicated Angular developers or maybe "a good number" of developers and a paid support plan with someone that can handle any issues with common 3rd party / open source components.

In the Npm/Angular ecosystem, generally you will only get a warning on version mismatches unless there is an incompatible API change.  The fact that something compiles doesn't mean it will work.

You take on a lot of risk either sticking with Angular 2 OR moving up to the current Angular release.  Sticking with Angular 2 leaves you little room for updating components which moved to Angular 4 as their official dependency.  You don't really know they will work unless you fully test things.  You do have nearly 100% code coverage in your tests right?    Of course, you can move to Angular 4 but there is always a chance that some component you use is stuck with Angular 2 and has some issue with Angular 4+.  Neither situation is good.  Angular 4 is supposed to be mostly compatible with 2 so maybe moving to Angular 4 is a safer bet?  I tossed my dice in that direction - if for no other reason, at least the components I use that moved to Angular 4 have a better chance of working (and/or gaining features I need) and if not - updated versions would be for version 4.  I suspect that many/most open source / 3rd party components will not be back patching for Angular 2  even if needed (unless you have a support contract of some sort). This is just my experience with a few items I used recently - I don't see any work going into Angular 2 compatible versions now that Angular 4 is the official dependency.

So this basically means that we must try and keep up with current releases of most everything to reduce the risk of a component becoming incompatible with something.  Of course, you may have components that don't release often (or maybe aren't even maintained any longer) - in that case you may have to do your own maint work.  This isn't a great situation to be in.

I will say that with Angular 4 using semantic versioning, it is a step forward in maturity and if enough important 3rd party projects either use semantic versioning or will shortly then some common pain points should clear up a bit.  Right now though, I still fear that any version decision made still leads to a painful problem. Increases in the maturity and stability of the entire ecosystem takes time.  I see the start of those changes occurring though (an example from this week is npm version 5 which was just released) - those in charge do appear to listen and are trying to improve things.

Now if only Bootstrap 4 would hurry along to a release.Sigh. Too much change in too short of a time span sure does cause a lot of headaches.

[Edit 2017/6/11] Using Angular 4 in production may not be overly problematic in itself - it is more about the supporting libraries, frameworks and utilities which are changing quickly and in incompatible ways. This is turning into a bit of "guilt through association". Some work that was started with Bootstrap 4 (alpha) is turning into an increasingly large headache.  I should have backed out Bootstrap 4 and reworked it with Bootstrap 3. Someone recently mentioned a desire to merge some code bases which would turn into a lot of work and analysis - which project dependencies are carried forward?  Hoping we can delay any merge for a little while - hopefully after Bootstrap 4 gets to a production release. At that point, it should make sense to carry forward all the "release" versions of things I migrated to already and get off of various beta items in other projects as well (Webpack 2 being the big one).

The loss of a pet

Well, one of our gerbils (Shadow) finally died May 26, 2017.  It was pretty sudden and very unexpected.  It was just within the last few weeks that my wife and kids finally moved from the apartment over to the house with me and "the boys". I really thought it would be another year before anything might happen to them.

I must admit that I shed quite a few tears over this - nothing like bringing the rest of the family to tears too.  Was it just because I really liked Shadow?  No.  I did really like him though. When we got them I didn't expect much even though I spent months figuring out that gerbils would be a good first pet for the family (er, I mean my daughter). They each have very distinct personalities and even though they don't produce the same level of interaction as dogs - you do talk to them and they do like your attention.  They are very curious and if you are doing anything near them they like to get in the middle of it.. sit in their play area and they like to climb on you and sit on our knees, shoulders, etc.  If you sweep their play area they want to sit and/or run in front of the brush/broom. If you are doing other work in the room they will sometimes just sit so they can keep an eye on you.. and try to get your attention for the treat they know you really want to give them..

So, if the tears were not just for a beloved animal then why?  I have always liked animals and I always hate to see one sick and/or hurt.  It is really sad to see an animal that is hurt and in pain - especially when they can't tell you what is wrong and have no way to fix it.  Here is what I went through with Shadow.

• On May 23th, I was doing my normal nightly "come out and say hi and you get a treat" thing.  That night Shadow did come out but only to grab the treat and head back down into his little hideaway in their tank. Normally he is a little more social but I thought that maybe he had just been playing during the night too much and was tired.  
• On May 24th, I had not seen him and he wouldn't come out for any treat.  I got concerned and took their topper off and had to dig out his nest area.  He was curled up and didn't want to move - his brother was curled up next to him at that time.  I was very concerned at that point but it was too late that night to do much.  My daughter and wife had gone to the apartment for one last night since my daughter had her last brick and mortar school exam the next day. My son was already in bed at that point.  It was probably 11pm or so.  I tried to rouse him a little and he would walk a little bit  but was obviously not feeling well.  He usually would only move for 10 seconds or so and then sit or lay down wherever he was and just stay there if not disturbed.  I cleared a spot in their play area so I could sit and he did come over and just curled up on my leg and laid there.  The last time one of them did that was when they were about 8 weeks old - just after we got them. They are normally in constant motion if not sleeping in their tank.  I put him in his sleeping area after trying to get him to drink.. not very successfully.  I did some research and decided that his only real chance was going to the vet the next day. Fortunately, there was one just down the street and they treat gerbils (not all vets treat small/"exotic" animals).  
• The morning of May 25th, he was still acting the same and I was mildly surprised he was alive.  I got to the vet when they opened and they noticed some blood in the urine. They expected it was a urinary tract infection (I didn't do xrays due to cost) so they gave him some antibiotics, pain killer and pumped him with fluid. They gave me the same meds to give him.  He had a mild seizure earlier that morning which I found out from the vet can occur if they are in lots of pain.  The expectation was that the meds would make a difference within 24 hours.  By that night though, he still wasn't any better. When I gave him his medicine that night about 8pm he did obviously like the flavor and took it well. He did move a few times but by 10pm I decided I better try to hand feed him some water. I don't think he was making any attempts to drink during the day. I got out the kids old medicine syringe filled with water and tried to get him to drink.  That worked a little bit but I still don't think he was getting enough.  He just laid on my chest for the most part and would occasionally wander a bit like he couldn't get comfortable.  By midnight it was obvious he wasn't improving.  I still had some small hope in me that he would improve but in my heart I thought he would die in the night.  When I put him in a spare tank that night, he almost seemed dead at that point but was still breathing.  I had been praying (yes, remember God said to pray for even the little things) that he would either get better or pass so he wasn't in pain. 
• May 26th around 6am I got up and he had died.  If he had been alive, my daughter was going to help give him his medicine that morning.  I woke her to let her know he was gone and to figure out how we wanted to handle it.

So were my tears just because of the trauma involved in trying to save a small creature that was in pain and could not do anything on its own?  That was part of it but not all.

The gerbils are the first pets that I have ever purchased myself and were our first family pets.  When we first got them, for quite a long time - me and my daughter would sit in their play area and play with them.  It was a nice bonding moment for me and Rachel - and the gerbils.  I have many fond memories of those days.  So some tears were related to sentimental moments.  I don't think that was all the reason for tears either though.

I asked Rachel what she would like to do with him.  She said she didn't care but I think she din't want to think about it.  I asked if she would like us to bury him in the back yard.  She liked that idea.  I got some spare wood (Gerbils are excited already at that thought) and made a box (i.e. tiny coffin) and we put him inside and used the air nail gun to close it up good.  When we went looking for a spot, I recommended near a nice palm tree and Rachel liked that but pointed to a slightly different spot and said "but in the sun".  I shed couple more tears at that for some reason. 

I think any loss reminds us that death is in everyone's future.  It reminds us of beloved family members that we lost (like most of my grandparents at this point).  It forces us to acknowledge that someday we will die and stand before God too.  

I think that I shed tears for all those reasons.  

As much as I liked Shadow and as much as I hate for Thumper to be alone - I am glad Shadow isn't in pain now. Now only if my wife didn't say "no more gerbils"..  maybe a dog in our future.  I suspect Thumper would be fine having a puppy running around that he can watch. Ok, probably not yet - too many house things to deal with right now.

Remember to praise God during both the good and bad times.

Scott

[Edit] The last picture of Shadow as I was trying to get him to drink while just laying on me.