My First Class Home Network

What goes into a good first class home network?

Now a days we are working from home and we rely on our internet connection. The home is an extension of the world wide network and needs to be reliable if we are to maintain our work and play environments.  

The opportunity to improve my home network when Google Fiber started digging in my neighborhood.  I wanted to set up the home network right.  The complete system consist of the following: 

1) a Gigabit Google fiber modem and network box. [~$70/mth]

2) A 24 port gigabit switch, and several 8 port gigabit switches where needed in the office and downstairs entertainment center. [~$130 ]

3) A mesh network using Ubiquiti access points so everywhere inside and around the house outside has WIFI.  [~$250 ]

4) A battery backed up UPS powering the modem, network box, the big switch and a couple of the Ubiquiti access point POE power supplies. [~$50]  

When an local office supply store went out of business I purchased the 24 port Gbit Switch, and put it to use in the new network.  What do I have need of a 24 port switch you ask?

I purchased a 1000 ft of CAT6 Ethernet cable and some modular RJ45 plugs and outlets and proceeded to run cable to every room in the house. Well, at least all the big rooms.  The office and the three bedrooms upstairs were easier than the downstairs family room.  For upstairs I cut a hole for the outlet plate, ran a very long drill bit up inside the wall, drilled a hole in the top plates of the walls into the attic.  I would find the drill bit in the attic and pull a string back down the hold to the wall plate. To reach the down stairs I had to find a pathway from the attic upstairs to the downstairs. It just so happens that the both AC units are in the attic above the second floor and all of the ducting for the return air and supply ducts were passed through hidden spaces in the floor plan.   I fished three CAT6 cables downstairs through one of these spaces and into a closet in the downstairs bedroom.  

We just had a lighting strike nearby and the power went off for about 5 seconds.  We did not loose network connection.  And since my computers are all laptops they all stays up through the black out.  Now if the power outage had lasted more than the an hour then my battery back up system would have given up the ghost and I would have been without high speed internet.  Then it would be a good time to read or take a nap I think.

I will post later about my forays into home automation, more wood working ideas (my making sawdust) and other home projects.  

A bit of history about me and computers. 

 I started working with computers back in the late 70's, before the internet, before the personal computer (PC), before the Apple Macintosh.  At UT I worked on the big mainframe in Taylor Hall.  I worked for a professor, A.J. Welch in the Bio-Med department and would help him out by taking his program runs down and submit them for compilation and execution.  It would not be immediate turn around but eventually the print out would be tossed in the outfeed window and I would grab it and the box of punch cards and hike back up to the professors office.  The project his was working on was pretty cool.  He was trying to create a model of the back of the eye.  The Retinas response to different wavelengths of light. The light sources were all lasers. We had an Argon Laser, a neodymium yag laser, a ruby laser, and a couple of others I can't recall.  The model was the first effort to understand how to treat detached retina and other eye issues. 

In school I learned to design with a microprocessor.  I put the skills I learned to use at the work-study job.  I helped out in the Bio-med lab trying to automate the timing of experiments and the data collection from temperature sensors.  I used the Motorola 68000 with a parallel I/O chip, a multichannel Burr-brown analog to digital converter module and a serial interface chip to control the shutter timing of an Argon laser,  index the stepper motors controlling the x-y-z coordinates of a platform, take temperature measurements and then storing the data on a digital formatted cassette tape.  The data was used to perfect the eye model.  

My first computer was a generic dual 5 1/4" floppy disk Intel 8086. I quickly outgrew this and upgraded to a Intel 286 with a 10 Mbyte hard disk and a 3 1/2 inch 700 Kbyte floppy disk.  I used this machine a lot, used the programming skills learned in college to write some Basic Account Software for use to use for home accounting. It would take in all our income and expenses, categorize it and be able to create reports for doing taxes. I had a modem I could use to dial into an email provider and exchange email with whoever had it, I think I had a Yahoo mail account.  

For the longest time I had DSL through AT&T then switched to Time Warner Road Runner internet service.  My work, Motorola and later Freescale would even pay for it so I could work from home as needed, That lasted for about 10 years.  I initially had 10 Mbit service, then 70 Mbit, then 300 Mbit service. 

Fast forward to 2020 and I have the most reliable network at home, all for less than $500. 

Nice Song

"Believe"

I ran across this song today.  Touched me.
Have a listen.

Skidding Sidewase into Home Base Yelling WOO HOO

Remember this motto to live by:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attactive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

I got to my brother's house in Katy, somewhat expecting to be able to talk with him about his bucket list and celebrate his 60th birthday in a grand way. But no way. Not in the cards. He was too far around the bases almost to Homebase. He didn't need a bucket list. He had live life to the fullest, and his body is broken, thoroughly used up. His mind was nowhere to be found. He had already check-out mentally, pain meds stolen it away.

Turns out Larry has cancer of the lungs, bones and liver. His liver is swolen to over 3 times it's normal size causing some extreme pain. His bone paid is evedent the most when he is sitting. He can't sit in one spot for very long. No wonder he had to check out. It was during this heighten time of pain he was able to get off meds for two days prior to executing his will. Had to of sound mind and body. What a brave man. While away from the heavy pain meds we were able to talk a bit about stuff. You know stuff. Remembering the way he teased me when we were kids, just what the big brother is supposed to do.

We had numerous games in the backyard on Booth Avenue that kept us busy and out of trouble. If you didn't get it right with your first attempt there was this concept of a "Do Over" where you could repeat your attempt to get it right. Larry did not have too many regrets. No need in his mind to ask for a Do Over. No need in his mind for a bucket list at this point. I think he had already got to do most of what he wanted to do in his life.

Now as Hospice has been engaged, he becomes more distant as pain meds increase to combat the increasing pain. Morphine is being used now. This at the cost of balance and muscle control. Yesterday the dogs were getting on his nerves and he tried to bend down and force one of the dog outside. He fell to his knees and exclaimed in pain as he got up slowly.

Then after that, things heated up with Larry's wife. She was mad and took it out on me. I am big man and can usually accept the anger, especially when it seems misdirected. Shes very angry at loosing Larry. Angry at Larry's family for hanging aound her house for the last two weeks and taking too much control over his care. She basically said she could do it all now, with Hospics's help. I'm thinking that maybe I should not continue to stay. After the confrontation I retreated to the bedroom and have been mulling things over for now the last 12 hours.

My decision is not based on what she wants but what Larry seems to want and need. As I was leaving this morning for breakfast Kathy told me that Sunday morning Larry had asked when I was coming back. I had taken a break last weekend and went home to take care of a few things. It was a good break, but things at Larry' degraded dramatically while I was absent, resulting in the outbust of anger.

I want to come sliding in to homebase after my life's journey, maybe not so well preseved, whooping and hollaring and excaiming what a great life. But if I have somewhat of a say in this, I don't think I want to slide in as early or as hard as Larry. My bucket list is still pretty long.

WOOT!

Peace to you all,

dodadPhilip

bucket list for my brother

It has been some time since I wrote anything here. Don't know if it's because I've not been inspired or just lost interest. But new situations arise that give me pause and question a lot of what I know.

My brother, Larry, called me this last Wednesday evening with some very bad news. Before I knew the news I made a stupid blunder. He has just moved from Trinidad and still had his Trinidad cell phone in use. He called me from it and ask me to call him back on it. I asked him straight away if this was that old international phone and he said yes. I replied that this call was costing me 3 to 4 dollars a minute and asked him to call me back. He said sure. Then after he called me back he told me the bad news I felt like a fool. After telling my sister Gingie this story, she used an good term. She said, "oh and you feel like such a tool!" A tool is right.

His news was that he had cancer and the prognosis was bad. He was told he only had a month to live. I didn't know what to say. I was not the first one of my 8 brothers and sisters to find out and I wasn't the last. He had lost track of who he had talked to. I come to find out he is on some good pain medicine along with anti-anxiety and anti-depression drugs. Sorta loopy and forgetful.

I have decided to push the pause button at work, take a month off and just go be with him, help him, however I can. My logical mind is going though all sorts of things I may need to help with, least of which is getting his affairs in order. I've called my favorite lawyer for help, Lindsey. So much more.

So off I go tomorrow on a different sort of adventure. Maybe is will be a bucket list of my making so he goes out with a smile. Like someone suggested, I will play through the old tapes, the good times with him, showing him how much his love has meant to me, his family and friends.

Peace,

Philip

come what may

To live in this household is to be free of what should be true. Because whatever you though should be true is inevitably proved to not be true. What you expect to happen doesn't.

I haven't experienced a quite, peaceful day in such a long time. I'm growing weary of the details. I don't know what to believe, that it will all work out, or that there still a lot of work to do. Cleaning the garage on Saturday was a 14 hour day. Wow I'm tired.

Laurie just signed in, and is about to try to catch up on her work. Data entry, billing, ... lots of time and stress for here. Especially trying to adjust for the change in schedule. She'll have her work cut out for her.

The wedding party we decided to move entirely to the house, bypassing the activity center. This will help tremendously with the amount of setup and cleanup required. It will also simplify the coordination. I hope that's all right with my sister who is getting married.

I leave you with - My 46"TV is broke and I can't seem to fix it. But hey, my garage is clean and I can put a car into it. yeh!

Philip

Making Sawdust

Today was a easy going day. Laurie woke me up asking if I might bring some tarps over to the church garage sale to lay some of the clothes on. I got up, threw some jeans and a flannel shirt on and was on my way. I spread the tarps on the grass and helped out a bit at the garage sale, enjoy a couple of breakfast tacos, found some golf shoes for $2.00 and was on my way to do some errands. To the bank, a quick stop into Academy to get some racquetballs and then on to Home Depot for a couple of hours.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been compiling a fairly lengthy list of small stuff I need to get at the hardware store. I use my treo's task list and list all of the stuff we need. Ended up being there the better part of two hours. It felt good to work out the little problems, find solutions for some future projects and just have some man fun.

With no time pressure I could have stayed longer but I was getting hungry by this time and still needed to go buy groceries for the week.

I get home hoping to find a package from Austin Homebrew with three kits in it, but nothing on the front step. Darn! I guess I'll just start installing, repairing the things I could with the stuff I just bought at Home Depot.

The first thing was to see what the cabinet doors look like under the white paint. I had two of the doors in the garage, taken off when I installed the stove several years back. I used some paint remover, and a little elbow grease to clean it up "real nice like" Unfortunately the doors are press wood and not a higher quality wood we could remove the paint and stain. So this means if we want to upgrade the kitchen cabinets we will need to re-paint them or replace the doors, or the whole entire set of cabinets. Something will need to be done before the graduation party in May. The cabinets are looking sorta dingy.

I had purchased some weather-proof electrical fixtures to replace the mess in the corner of the patio. I had an extension cord coming down supplying power to the patio amp and tuner. It was definitely not to code. But before I could install that I thought I'd better build something to house the amp and tuner. They've been on a short plastic table covered with a tupperware box for the longest time. So now to the sawdust part.

I clean off the crud from on top of the table saw. The leftovers from making Donovan and Mira's blocks were there. That brought back a bunch of fun memories. I look around the garage for material to build the cabinet with and find what I need and commence making sawdust. I'm still sawing when Laurie come home from a seminar she's been attending. When I start to try to assemble the cabinet I find that the wood glue I had was almost solid. The top was open and it had hardened. Ok, so now we need to go back to the hardware store. I need some more glue and the hardware for the cabinet.

Laurie was up for going with me. I think she really wanted to go by Ross or Michaels. She didn't complain too much we I was trying to figure out the hinges issue.

It's a good thing I didn't have good glue cause I remembered I needed to drill holes for shelf brackets and prepare the cabinet for hanging on the wall. It would have been awkward trying to do the drilling after the unit was assembled.

When we got home it was time for dinner. I cooked bacon wrapped filet mignon in a mushroom sauce and French cut green beens , and a mixture of corn peas and brown rice. We cleaned off the dining room table and ate in candle light with the piano player serenading us. We took our time eating and talking. Great dinner.

After dinner I drilled the holes and then assembled and clamped the cabinet. It should be set in the morning.

We get to visit with Brian, Laura and play with Mira tomorrow, but time for bed now.

Planning for the Future

With the near term set now, I want to try to find the positive in the events.

Lower Stress now: I'm tired, so first thing I'm going to try to do is rest more. That might be difficult without making L feel alone in her evening workings.

No more howling destructive dog around. Jeeves is so young and inexperienced compared to Joey. I was working in the back yard Saturday, Jeeves was sitting in the corner of the yard toward the 4 way stop just howling at every different car noise. I would laugh, reassure him he was doing a great job running off those big bad cars, trucks and buses. Either he felt he did enough or just got tired, but finally he had enough and went and laid down to bit on a chew toy. Meanwhile Joey, looked up each time from her sunny spot whenever I spoke with Jeeves and I imagined was smiling. Maybe it was a learning moment for the dog. Now I can devote some more time to rewiring the lighting he's torn up. Maybe the grass will come back and the garden will get prepared without pesky poop's everywhere.

We can clear out some of the old furniture. With the church garage sale coming up, I will consider donating a significant amount of furniture that is currently crammed into the house.

Maybe we can make one of the upstairs rooms into a music/recording studio. A place we can go to practice, play, relax and have fun.

All those extra dirty dishes that magically appeared in the kitchen sink throughout the day will be gone.

I won't have to wonder where that kitchen utensil went this time. They moved all the time. It was sorta a game we played. Where in the world is waldo, for the kitchen.

I don't need to leave the AC/Heat on during the day. I'll be able to reduce my exaggerated water and electricity bill.

Well I need to get back to it. More later.

It's not working out

To make this a win-win situation, Love and Logic suggest asking what is it we get out of your moving back in. The response you hope for is, oh I'll do the chores your doing, or I'll paint the garage or something. If that doesn't work then you have to become the landlord you are. If they don't contribute in a positive way but instead undermine the fleeting little respect other's have for us then it has become a loose-loose situation. We are not really helping anyone out by continuing to put up with it. Not that her moving in hasn't increased the contact and interaction (good and bad). But if I'm measuring whether I've gained anything, I have to say it's definitely been a negative gain on most fronts.

Anyone else want a border?

With love and logic I resign the position of designated flunky.

How do you convince someone their making a big mistake?

I don't know, but we have tried a bunch of different tactics. Attempts range from the chatting, offering bribes and consequences, washing away the ugly (my kids will relate).
Help

Back to the Grind

Today seems especially hard for me. Suffering from lack of sleep, I attempted to get up and get to work at a descent hour and only partially succeeded. Got there by nine but was in some what of a frumpy mood. I woke up at 7 am with Kt's departure for school in Freddy. Freddy for those who don't know is a 1980 4 Runner with a bunch of miles and a low pressure muffler system that rumbles sorta loudly. After she left, I thought for a second and realized how empty the house was, just L and I. Wow, how quiet and peaceful.

Ahhhhhh.

Don't get me wrong having all of the kiddo's and grand kiddos around was a bunch of fun, but it was tiring.

Not 15 minutes later I hear Freddy come rumbling back down the street, then a door slam, the front door slam, racing feet up the stairs and a hard knock on the door; A urgent and slightly freaked out Kt said, "I need some gas money, the gas warning light came on as I was on my way to school. " Little did she realize that a quick pull off of the road and a call back to us and I would easily explained that she had about 20 miles to go if the light just came on, plenty to drive to and from school.

After L raced around for a couple of minutes to find some cash, she ran back out the door, now hopeless late for dance try outs for modern.

And now we lay back down for one more minute of peace and can't get the whole Kt thing still going round in our heads.

The day went on with this mood for most of the day. I did take a short walk around the campus during lunch time. It had an energizing effect, especially with how cold it was. I was able to get some work done, still with a sorta half-hearted pace.

Home, and right to a meeting with a sales lady who we purchased long-term care insurance from. It's a lot less than I thought it would be.

Off to church for an hour or so to plan the music for Sunday. With that done I called my brother-in-law J. We had agreed to meet at the house. He was borrowing my USB HDTV stick for the big game Thursday.

Now it's time for a bit of sleep. Night all.

It just takes time

It's quiet here tonight except for the music I have playing. Raining outside. I've been wanting to organize myself, re-build a computer, edit a year old wedding video, tying to keep the hot tea flowing to sooth my throat. It just all takes time.

Time, Talents and Treasures. That's what the children's sermon skit was about today.

Time waisting was a depiction of TV watching. Truly a mind numbing time sink. I can too easily get hung up in watching movies.

Talents was shown as a young man playing a saxophone, afraid to play in front of the audience. Maybe I'm on the other end of the spectrum of this one, a bit over committed.

Treasure was shown as a cute girl in a Ben Franklin outfit screaming "It's all mine!" In my case I may have a good salary, it's not a certainty in these days and time. I can't presume that I am immune to the lay-off. Too many of my associates are there to say beware.

The pendulum of my priorities is shifting as I think of being an empty nester once more, to more of a focus on making sure my kids are not burdened with my care when I retire. I'm going to first get out of debt, then saving for an emergency fund (3-6 months of expenses), and finally pushing the retirement fund hard till I can't anymore. Live like no one else so that later we can live like no one else!

Then when I do retire, celebrate life some more. At least more than I already do. Spend time with my wife, kids and grandkids, not missing an opportunity to celebrate them. I also want to try to learn some more things, keep current with technology by designing some fun electronic gadgets and keep playing racquetball and golf, make some sawdust occasionally, and keep playing and singing.

Sounds like a good plan. Remind me that I wrote this, later, when I can't remember.

pbd

It comes to us all

Mortality is a fact of life - we are born, we live and we die. My father in law just passed away.

When family dies it makes me think about my own mortality.

I woke up very early from a dream earlier this week. In the dream, my sister said her son had just won the lottery but it was quickly stolen. For some reason I couldn’t go back to sleep. I laid in bed for about an hour making mental list of all the things I wanted/needed to do. I got up on the edge of the bed in the dark and proceeded to enter them all into my to-do list on my phone. At then end of it all, I set priorities and due dates for everything, putting off things that can wait. The process was freeing.

Who would do these things if I was to pass away? Would they still be important to anyone else? How much of what I do is because I'm able and willing, or is it I'm too cheap or too much a pack rat or.....

One of the questions I asked myself was "How much money would I be willing to spend to keep my kids alive? That was after I heard Dave Ramsey ask the question of a caller on his radio show. Without health insurance I would be probably go way in debt if there was some catastrophic event requiring hospitalization or surgery for any of them. I have three kids without health insurance. My highest priority is to provide them all health insurance, until such time as they have the means to get it on their own. This also will encourage me to help them get to that self insurability as soon as possible, right?

I'm knocking things off the list steadily. The AC is working a bit better, the sprinklers zones that were out are coming on again. I've ordered some parts for the car I'm selling. Work seemed to be on track until this morning when I found out the news of my father-in-law. The priorities change, new things get added, others fall off the list.

It reminds me of the movie "The Bucket List." If you haven't seen it go see it. A great movie.

What do I want to leave as a legacy?

What do I want to do before I die?

Vacation Strategy day ?

Seven Steps to a great day
Step 1. Sleep until you wake up. Stop counting the days.
Step 2. Enjoy a nice long walk or run. Take a nap if you can.
Step 3. Enjoy feeding Donovan and eating what's left over.
Step 4. Take a nap if you can.
Step 5. Eat lunch on the deck. Subway sandwiches today. Yum.
Step 6. Go to the beach and build a sand castle and dig a big hole in the sand that is so deep Donovan can use it as his own personal play lake.
Step 7. Put kids to bed and enjoy a night out with the wife.

Vacation Strategy Day 1

Day 1
Take off for as long as possible and as far away as possible.

From what? - Normal day-to-day living, work, house, dog, cats, yard work....

To where? This time to California to visit Marcy, Zach and Donovan.
California is forever great weather, the people are friendly, and the grandkids are awesome.

Brought the teen and the grandkid to boot. First time on a plane for Ryan. She was stoked, and a little afraid. She Kept asking where are we. I had the US map in the airline magazine open and kept putting dots on the map as we flew along. She got bored with that and fell asleep on my lap. Woke up and we started to land.

I heard they are going to discontinue the direct flight on American. What a shame. Such a convenience.

I'm sitting for some friends of Zach, watching their not very sleep little girl. she finally went to sleep as I enjoy some fresh home brew and a movie.

Just remembered some last minute things I forgot at work, I forgot my weekly report. I can just knock it out before tonights over.

To wine and not to wine

I was given a gift by Greg during Christmas of 2008 that I finally got around to tasting.  It was a bottle of 2007 Zinfandel wine from the Sehhesio Family Vineyards. 

I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Thanks Greg.  I opened and got inspired.  I started cooking some pasta sauce.  It ended up being very good also.  

I remembered that Greg said that his father had enjoyed this particular wine.  He had good taste I think.  

I looked up the vineyard and started to go shopping. I think I'd like to get some more.  Greg ??

Meanwhile my batch of wine, a Chilean Merlot is progressing nicely. I'm at the clarification stage with about 6 weeks till  is ready.  

 

 

Parallels

There some funny parallels between electrical engineering and life.  Like the title of a book I've begun at work - "Grounding and Shielding".  A book that most of you would not find so interesting, but the parallels are. 

If you were grounding yourself you would be doing something that would be bringing you back to earth. But if you are grounding out, you would be turning off your brain.  You are not going to be able to think.   

If you were shielding yourself wouldn’t you be protecting yourself from something bad or threatening?  Or hiding from something like what’s real or truth. 

I just got back from a Lutheran Synod Gathering last weekend where I witness a lot of shielding and grounding going on. In this case some people had grounded out their brains.  Checking their brains at the door like you would check a coat at the cloak-room.  To ground out is to kill potential, to eliminate all energy from, to short out consciousness.  It was very sad to see in action.   Thank God it was a small minority of people.

I wonder how someone becomes so engrained in a viewpoint that they cannot see beyond their myopic views.  Is it their shielding, or their blinders?  Maybe it's fear.  Maybe it's lack of curiosity or ambition.  They surround themselves with like-minded people breeding contempt for others who might think differently. 

Please let me know if you detect any of that in me, because the picture of this does not look so pretty.  

What's green anyway

I started doing some research into using renewable energy, solar, wind, water reclamation and the like. After our sustained drought we had, it occurred to me that if the predictions about our climate are even half right, we will be faced with a growing energy crisis.

I first thought about water. How much do I need? Do I collect just water runoff from the roof, or think about how to use the grey water I produce? I imagined putting in a 50 to 10 thousand gallon underground tank and initially use it for irrigation and pond supply. Underground since our neighborhood association is anal about things that stick up above fence line.

One of my colleges here are work quoted a very alarming statistic, "50% of the electricty generated is lost in distribution." Wow!

Faced with ever growing prospects of not having a job, gets me thinking what I could do to reduce my dependence on the grid to help reduced my costs. Maybe start an installation business on my own. PV modules at $1000 a pop for 200W are sorta over the top expensive. Inverters and storage are yet another major expense. I could just design my own inverter system. I have that knowledge.

More when I have more time. Anyone use Power4Home and can tell me whether it's a waist of time?

What is about life?

I was watching some archive footage of a gentleman giving His "Last Lecture" on Ophra show and want to comment.

I recommend it. Here's the link.
http://www.clarin.com/shared/v8.1/swf/fullscreen_video.html?archiv o=http://videosfla.uigc.net/2008/07/29/rp.flv

My step mother is dying of pancreatic cancer, but has taken the Eeyore approach and given up. It was hard for me to accept but she did not want visitors. She didn't have a phone so I sent her one of mine, but I never got through to her on it. She didn't want to talk with anyone either. According to by step brother, she barely tolerated him being there. Soo sad!

Something I've heard twice in the last week that made me stop and think. Once from Dave Ramsey and then again from the man giving this lecture. The character traits that I think are so important. Have integrity, show gratitude, and play hard. The lecturer has this to say and I agree with him. He summarizes it's not just "how to achive your dreams" but "how to live your life".

A. If you want to achieve you dreams you need work and play well with others and that means you have live with integrity. Simple advice that you'll find very difficult to follow. Just, TELL the TRUTH.
B. When you screw up, Apologize. Apologize the right way. It has three components.
1) Tell them "I'm sorry!"
2) Tell them "It was my fault."
3) Ask them "How do I make it right?"
The third element of the apology is very important, it show sincerity.
C. Show Gratitude.
D) Don't think complaining or wining solves any problems. You can choose to take your finite time, energy and effort complaining or playing the game hard. This is probably going to be more helpful to you in the long run.

Sorting My Thoughts

I start this with an eye towards sharing my ideas and inviting responses.

I'm reminded in this season that I have so much to be thankful for and so I'll start there.

I'm thankful for:
1) Life - It's definitely better than the alternative.
2) Family - I have a wonderful, gracious wife, 9 lovely children that keep me humble.
3) Job - My job is actually fun to do and keeps me learning.
4) Music - I do enjoy playing bass and guitar, especially with a group.
... I'll have to continue this later when I have time.