Rob: Thank you for downloading This Developer's Life. I really hope you enjoy this holiday show and there wouldn't be one if it weren't for our sponsors. And I'd like thank Twilio, T-W-I-L-I-O, twilio dot com go check 'em out if you need voice or SMS for your application, twilio dot com has got you covered. In addition SublimeSVN; go check them out at sublimesvm dot com. It's a subversion server for Windows and it's all web based and it does all kinds of groovy things like automated backups, email, RSS, user groups and it's insanely easy to use so if your organization uses subversion, go check SublimeSVN. Alright, on with the show.
[Musical Interlude]
Rob: At any given moment, how many things are you thinking about? Maybe work? Something at home, with the family or friends? What you're going to do that night? Where you parked your car? What your going to eat for lunch? What you're going to make for dinner? Whether you should go on a diet? Maybe go to the gym? Maybe where you're gonna go for the holidays? Who you're gonna see? What gifts you're gonna give? What gifts you're going to get? And on and on...
It's safe to say that our brains get packed, full of noise, and occasionally we get times to relax, such as the holidays. Like right now! Maybe you're sitting there driving along in your car; you've got your headphones on and you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking "man I really just need to unplug, to unwind, disconnect, turn those voices down". Well good for you because that is exactly what this show is all about, it's about disconnecting. Trying to get away from the noise, ya know? We have two story tellers today and it's just me and Scott. You get to follow us.
Scott gets to do something really cool and fun, he's going to Disneyland. You might think "hey man, that is not exactly the place to get away from the noise" but when you're with your family, smiling in the Los Angelos sun in the middle of winter, it's pretty pretty neat.
My wife on the other hand gets to go away. I get to watch the kids for a week. You can come with me as I am forced to unplug and stop working so much in order to be with my children. What ultimately ends up with my deleting my Twitter account. Yes, I did.
Stay with us.
[Musical Interlude]
Rob:
Daddy, Ruby's bleeding.
So I run out of my office and I see there's blood all over the floor. Now it's not like, pools of blood, I don't want to over exaggerate, but there's blood on the floor. I look down and it's like footprints of blood. There's blood everywhere. [giggles] That's me a week ago watching my children with my wife gone and yea, that really happened. My daughter had a blood blister on her ankle and they were playing and it popped. I never saw it, I never even knew it was there and man, I didn't know those things had that much blood but hey it's me, Mr. Mom, watching my kids... bleeding! What fun!
[Musical Interlude]
Rob So I decided to record this last week. I was really curious what would happen with my wife being gone and the amount of work I needed to do right before the holidays because you what, everyone needs to jam stuff in right before they go off on vacation and I'm planning on taking some time off. And I gotta tell you, it was pretty interesting, this whole process. I captured a few of the more salient moments and I'm gonna play those for you here. But the biggest one in my mind was seeing blood all over the floor. My wife's not even around... Lets pick up the story from there.
[Musical Interlude]
Rob: And my daughter sitting there, blood in her hands, blood on her foot and blood everywhere and I was thinking "okay it's time to go to the hospital and my wife's not here. [giggles] Ohh, what the fuck am I doing? Okay, anyway." Well I know a number of our listeners don't have children, but you will someday and believe me seeing blood anywhere near your child is pretty much the most traumatic thing. It sends you right into orbit, believe me. Anyway, I don't wish that on anyone, but let's rewind the tape a bit, that's not exactly where the story started. That was about the third day into it, so let's go back to the very very beginning.
So I'm standing here in my driveway just as my wife pulled away to go to the airport. Uhh, this is going to be an interesting week for sure. And what's kinda funny is, I watched her car pull away and I was thinking to myself, "can I really do this?" I mean of course I can; this isn't my first time alone with my children but the problem is that I'm really, really, really busy with work and I'm gonna have to juggle a lot. I mean it's really hard anyway when your spouse goes away and you have 2 kids, you gotta deal with it, but I'm looking at this like an opportunity to like, disengage. Um, it's gonna pull me away from work and I need that because I work way to much. I stay downstairs and my wife will have dinner ready upstairs, I'll come blasting upstairs for enough time to eat something, put them to bed and sometimes I'm back to work and other times, maybe, well I'll be lucky and I don't. But, this will be good.
[Musical Interlude]
Rob: I'm sitting at my desk; this is weird. Uh my wife is... she works at home, just like I do but we both have offices here in our house. We both are able to and office and uh, she works out of the house as do I. And uh, she's not here, and it's weird because the house is always bustling with something. I mean she's moving up and down the stairs, she's seeing patients, she does acupuncture. And there is voices always, there's some kind of activity, it's either her or the children, but it's so quiet. I'm just not used to that. But it's kind of nice.
So I just checked my calendar here. I use Google's calendar and it syncs with my phone. I've put in all of the times I have to be somewhere for the kids and my god, this is crazy. I had no idea just how much.. I mean for instance, both of them they go to a different school so they start and they get out at different times and one of them has a short day this week and the other has ballet lessons and oh my goddness, [giggling] how am I going to do this?
[Musical Interlude]
Rob: Alright well it's lunch time and I've been reasonably productive. It's kind of funny, I spend so much time on Twitter. And uh, you know reading emails and so on, I've had to shut it off because I know that I got to get up at two and get out of here. And, well it's two. I'm sitting here staring at a billing problem that I'm trying to fix for Tekpub and I can't finish it. I have to walk away and you know my partner, my business partner, James Avery, is on Skype and we're talking about all the things we can do once we finish the billing system. And there's like a mountain of things that, I can't do it. I've got to get up and walk away. I'm exposed[not-sure], that is part of the deal. [door slamming noise] Whoops slammed the door. I guess that's part of the deal. I have to be able to get up and disengage. So anyway, I'm talking as I'm walking here because I've got to go. I'm already late.
[Musical Interlude]
Rob: I like to think of myself as an optimistic person and well I know I went into this week thinking "this will be pretty easy weekend, I'll get to hang with my kids a little bit more, disengage from work... you know I'll just have to adjust." And while that last part, "I'll just have to adjust", well it's not that simple. I own a business that I have to maintain. I also have to do this podcast which I very much enjoy and I have a couple contracts on the side. Just turning off isn't that easy. The good news is, that within no time, I am reminded of why I am doing this.
[Musical Interlude]
Rob's child: When ever I run, my pants keep falling down.
Rob: [giggling] That happens to me all the time too.
Okay, well we're out in the back yard. We're playing. This is fun. I can't lie and tell you that I don't think I have tons of stuff to do but...
Hey is that some kind of fort or... what are we doing?
Rob's child: What do you mean?
Rob: I mean what's this whole, like...
Rob's child: We're giving gifts to each other. Like Ruby gave me that wood full of flowers.
Rob: Ohh sweet
Rob: So just to set the scene here a little bit, my kids have this ornate decoration on the little deck that's right outside of our bedroom and it's in these crazy patterns. They got banana leaves and coconut husks and little twigs and sticks all done up in this crazy pattern and they've grabbed some of their animal figures and arranged them just so into like little beds and little buildings and stuff. It's this whole big thing they've whipped out of nowhere within minutes.
Rob's child: Well I just gave her the wood and the flowers all separated.
Rob: That's very nice. I see you got your pants back up. [giggling]
Rob's child: Every time I run my pants fall down, even when I'm like all the way over there by Pua, when she got dead. [child giggling]
Rob: Pua is the cat that we had. Got run over by a car and we buried her in our back yard.
Rob: [laughing at children]
Rob's child: ...and...
Rob: My sensitive sweet daughter.
Rob's child: ...and I got this.
Rob: Oh, that's a really cool coconut husk. You found that over by Pua?
Rob's child: mmhmm.
Rob: Cool. Well what are you doing with it?
Rob's child: Whenever I run back, my pants fall down up to here.
Rob: Maybe it's Pua's ghost pulling your pants down.
Rob's child: Noooo..... [very exaggerated]
Rob: [giggling] Yea, what billing system?
[Musical Interlude]