Streams of Consciousness

Over the past few difficult weeks, on more than one occasion, I've been overtaken with the impulse to pick up the phone and call my mom. That would be standard practice for me in times of trouble or celebration. I wonder if this impulse will ever subside? I read recently that the hardest part about losing a parent is that we no longer feel like a child. It is nearly impossible for me to imagine the rest of my life without my mom. And so, I am taking things day by day, as she would suggest I do. There are so many seemingly contradictory feelings running through my mind. Regret for the memories yet to be made, but thankfulness for the treasure of memories that we have. Sorrow for the quick progression of a beastly disease, but gratefulness for the shortened suffering. Sadness for not having had a few more meaningful conversations, but peace with knowing that nothing important was left unsaid. Mom was a person of passion. She invested everything in her relationships with her friends a...

On The Riddle of Life As I reflect on how a life consists Of breaths and steps throughout the days and years And Love, though sometimes painful, yet persists To keep us moving through our trials and tears. The riddle vexes scientists and saints Alike they cannot answer why we’re here Or where we’ll go and so we all may fear Meaningless in the picture that God paints. But Faith and Hope and Love are gifts He gave For use in times that cut us like a knife Holding us aloft when there are no cures We need not fear the darkness or the grave And sickness though it robs us of our life The body leaves us yet the soul endures. --by Eric Matthew Vajentic, lovingly dedicated to the memory of my mother, Judith Ann LaPosta Vajentic.

The following were the prayers of the faithful offered at my mom's memorial mass, written by her niece Liz and recited by her sister-in-law Anna Kathryn: Our response to the prayers of the faithful is, Lord hear our prayer. Judy was loved deeply by her parents and brothers. May the emptiness that is felt by Florence, Robert and Eugene be filled with the love and prayerful support of many friends and family. We pray to the Lord. Judy was a dedicated and loving wife of Rick, whom she affectionately called Giz. May their shared love sustain him and may her memory comfort him. We pray to the Lord Judy was a nurturing and devoted mother of Eric and Lynae. May the life lessons they learned from her keep her alive in their hearts and be shared in her honor. We pray to the Lord Judy was an amazing grandmother of Dominic, Benny and Reegan. May they remember all the good times they shared with Gramma Judy and pray to her when they miss her. We pray to the Lord Judy was a compassionate listen...

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." --Emerson This is a nice expression of the notion that actions speak louder than words. In the long run, our character cannot be masked with mere words. We may temporarily be able to 'charm' people, but eventually they will discover who we are .

Hi honey, In honor of your 37th birthday, here are 37 reasons I love you: 37. The dimple on your chin 36. You gave me your white truck 35. You chose me over your demonic cat, Tucker 34. You do 99.9% of my laundry 33. You were born in the same hospital as me, in Washington, PA 32. You go to watch the Steelers games at Minsky's with me 31. You let me go to watch the Steelers games by myself when you don't feel like going 30. Your name is Sharon, which I think is awesome 29. You enjoy eating at 54th Street with me 28. You indulge me when I have injuries/sickness 27. You cook most of the food that I eat 26. You like to go to the movies with me 25. You let Dominic and I play video games 24. You can set-up Ben's train sets 23. You take all of the pictures for our family (and, put together excellent scrapbooks!) 22. You like books 21. You tell me I'm good at grilling, even though I know I'm not 20. You thought it would be cool to have pierogies at our wed...

Summer. It used to be the seemingly never-ending season of freedom. Somewhere along the way, it has become my least favorite time of the year. Not only do I despise the heat, I seem to fall into a rut of sorts at this time every year. Football has long been over. Hockey is over. And, Lord knows, the Pirates season is always already over! Although I like the extended evenings, I hate when it gets daylight so early in the morning. I do enjoy the opportunity to be outside , however, I much prefer the milder temperatures of Fall and Spring. Unfortunately , summer just does not hold the same magic as it did when I was a kid. No summer vacations. No endless warm evenings with nothing to worry about. It makes me long for my younger days, but most of all, it makes me long for September!

I may never see another year like this one as a Pittsburgh sports fan! What a ride! The Pens got to run through some of their biggest rivals in route to the franchise's third Stanley Cup. First, they took care of the Flyers in six games. Nothing new under the sun:) Next up, Alex Ovechkin and his merry band of over-hyped skaters. It took 7 games, but it was well worth it to see the blowout in Game 7. That one should leave a mark. The Carolina series was somewhat anticlimatic, with the 4 game sweep. However, it did involve Malkin's Hat Trick game in Game 2, and Miro Satan getting into a fight. Crazy! Then, the Red Wings. Oh, how sweet it was to defeat Hossa, the Benedict Arnold of hockey who defected last year from the Pens to join the Red Wings because they game him the "best chance to win the cup." Hollywood couldn't have scripted it any better, with the Red Wings/Pens rematch, and Hossa not scoring a single goal in the 7 game series. It was definitel...

Here we are on the doorstep of Spring, and I haven't yet written about the Steelers magical 2008-2009 season. Of course, one glance at Streams of Consciousness will reveal that I haven't written much of anything lately. What better way to break out of a slump than to summarize the surreal season of the Steelers march to their 6 th championship. Yes, that's me there at the right, playoff beard and all, standing in section 527 of Heinz Field, after the presentation of the Lamar Hunt trophy to the AFC Champion Pittsburgh Steelers . Through some divine stroke of fortune, Sharon and I were able to attend the AFC Championship game in Pittsburgh on January 18, 2009, against the rival Baltimore Ravens. I am on the Steelers season ticket waiting list (approx. 20 years out), which gives me the opportunity to try to buy playoff tickets each year through a special pre -sale. So, this year in early December, when the letter came in the mail with my special Ticketmaster code,...

Tomorrow is Election Day 2008. I'm voting for Barack Obama. I haven't written much lately about politics. Heck, I haven't written much lately about anything. However, I wanted to note on the eve of the election exactly whom I will be voting for here in the swing state of Missouri. I was once a big John McCain fan. In 2000, I enthusiastically supported him in the rough primaries against W. I still wish that he would have won at that time. I think he would have made a much better president than our current one. However, like so many others, Obama has capture my imagination. This, in and of itself, is not enough to support someone for president. In fact, alone, it would be a dangerous reason to support someone. However, Obama has proven himself over the past couple of years to be all things a president should be. I am eagerly anticipating his acceptance speech tomorrow night. And, in a Shakespearian twist of fate, Obama's grandmother, one of the key figures in...

I've been exercising like a lunatic over the past couple of months, and I'm starting to see it pay off on the rowing machine (IMO, one of the toughest cardio workouts at the gym). After only being able to row over 7500 meters/30 minutes once in over a year, I have now achieved that milestone 4 consecutive times! I am very proud of this accomplishment. Rowing more often has obviously helped, but I've also been playing intense basketball and racquetball a couple of times each week. I've also been lifting an average of twice a week, which is just fine by my standards. Things I still need to improve on: I'd like to integrate push-ups and sit-ups back into my life on a daily basis, and I also need to seriously address my diet. For all of the cardio work I've been doing, I'm not losing weight. I'm maintaining, which is o.k., but I've got a long way to go to get to 200 lbs, which is where I should be. Some of the slow weight loss might be because...

Project 2008 begins tomorrow. Two goals: 1) The Steelers win the Super Bowl 2) The Patriots lose a game

Today is September 3rd. It's cold and rainy outside. But, I love it! My birthday was yesterday, and my favorite time of the year is always between my birthday and New Year's Day. It's football season. I love the weather (I like wearing sweaters and long sleeves). I love raking leaves, building fires and enjoying the aromas and sights of Fall. I am always a little bit extra motivated to be productive before the end of the year. Sort of a coda to the year that we will leave behind in a few months. Here's to wishing everyone a happy final 1/3 of 2008. And, Go Steelers!

That I don't have!

Sharon had her semi-annual scrapbook weekend, so Dominic and I got to hang out together for the second weekend in a row. Ben stayed up at Sharon's parents for the sake of all of our sanity. Dominic and I have really gotten to enjoy these weekends together--we call them Domi/Daddy weekends. We made several stops at Blockbuster, went out to eat, went swimming and lazed around the house. We also finished reading our latest book, Shiloh, which we both really enjoyed. In other news, Ben started at his new day care today. Big adjustment, but it sounds like he did o.k. We are looking forward to having him in a more structure environment, and the school seems really nice. I bought a gas grill last week, and started to put it together yesterday. I worked on it for about 3 hours, and I'm only halfway done. I should have bought an assembled model. This is not something I want to screw up either, so I don't blow up my house. Anyway, I'm going to try to get it finished up ...

I had a pretty good week of exercise. I made it to the gym every day, used the ab-lounge a few days, did pushups every day, did some jumprope reps one day and lifted weights twice. Not bad, even though I did lose every single game of basketball I played. I was really happy with my run on the treadmill on Friday, where I was able to run a 5K in under 31 minutes, at a pace of 6.0 mph. I hadn't been able to do that for a long time. Next week, we are going to Iowa over the weekend, so I want to make sure that I have a great week at the gym, and that I do the everyday little things that will help--taking the stairs, parking further away at work, doing pushups, doing situps, jumprope, etc.

Earlier this week I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to remove a password from an Access 2007 database (file extension .accdb). The database was created in a previous version of access and subsequently "upgraded" to the Access 2007 format. I believe some type of a wizard was used to perform the "upgrade." The security model is evidently different in Access 2007 than in previous versions. It doesn't appear that you can set/unset database passwords. Instead, in Access 2007, there is an option to Encrypt with Password. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be logically similar to the earlier version password architecture, but there was no way that I could find to easily remove the password that had been created in the earlier version when using the Access 2007 interface. Access security has always been confusing to me, and I need to take the time someday to understand how the security model is supposed to work in Access 2007. An...

Last year Dominic and I went to the Iowa State Fair the weekend before he began 2 nd grade. I thought it might be fun to start a tradition of going on a trip with Dominic the last weekend before each of his summer vacations end. With that in mind, we planned a fishing trip for last week, and then headed up to Iowa for the remainder of the weekend. We both had a great time! Wednesday, August 13 I snuck out of work about an hour early so that we could get a head start on our trip to Osage Beach, where we had a room booked at the Econo Lodge. It was a smooth trip, both of us excited about being out of Kansas City and on a mini-vacation. We arrived at Osage Beach around 8:30, checked into our motel and grabbed a bite to eat at Arby's . Dominic even swam a little bit at the outdoor pool at the hotel, although he didn't enjoy being in the pool by himself at night, even though I was right there next to the pool. Thursday, August 14 The big fishing day! I hired a guide to tak...

I am not that big of a golf fan. I enjoy playing a few times a year, and I'll watch some matches here and there, usually if my Dad or someone else is watching and I just happen to be around. This past Saturday, I was beat from a full day in the sun, so I flipped on the TV in the evening, and there began my journey into captivation by Rocco Mediate. At first, I noticed his easy going style and his penchant for chatting with the fans. I thought this was cool. Next, I learned that he was 45 years old with a history of back problems and was trying to become the oldest player ever to win a U.S. Open--what would have been his first major victory. Then, I found out he was from Western Pennsylvania! I became an immediate fan. I did not see the match on Sunday, but I was glued to a live stream feed on my computer Monday afternoon. That was the most enjoyment I've ever had watching golf. What a battle of epic proportions. While I would have loved to see Rocco come out on top, ...

I was recently reading about Microsoft Data Access Components, and noted that some components have been deprecated, while other components have been marked as obsolete. What exactly is the difference between deprecated and obsolete? I came across the following definitions: Code that is tagged as "deprecated" is officially still available for use but will typically have already been scheduled for removal at some point, so it is in your best interests to start looking for an alternative. Code that is tagged as "obsolete" is offically no longer supported and shouldn't play a part in any normal build, but those features might still be available if you absolutely need to access them. You are *strongly* discouraged from continuing to depend on obsolete code on an ongoing, long-term basis. As of today, the following MDAC components have been deprecated: Microsoft Jet Database Engine MSDASQL(the OLE DB provider for ODBC) Remote Data Services (RDS) The following MDAC ...