Author Archives: Tim Elhajj

May 11 2008
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family

Aaron’s Web Gem: Unassisted Double Play

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Aaron is having a pretty good season.

Last week playing first base, he earned an unassisted double play. There was a boy on first and he was standing partway toward second. The batter hit a grounder to Aaron and he scooped it up and tagged (collided with really) the boy heading to second. After he made the tag, I watched his eyes get big and he raced over to first. At first, I didn’t get what was going on. Then I realized he was trying to for the double play.

He got to first base just a beat before the runner. I yelled so hard I embarrassed myself. His coach was so impressed he gave him two tickets to the Mariner’s game for Friday night.

Aaron took his mom.

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May 08 2008
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writing

A Mother’s Day Story

I wanted to post another excerpt from the work I’ve been doing in my memoir.

I show my wife all the stories I come up with and rely on her sage comments and suggestions. After reading this one, she said, “You were such an pain in the ass.”

But she said it with love.

I call this one, “I Am Not Your Broom” (with apologies to They Might Be Giants).

I Am Not Your Broom

“I’m sick of this,” Mom says. “Sick of it.”

I am lying on the love seat and hear Mom come grousing into the living room. Cocking my head, I see she is upset but have no idea why. I ignore her and continue to watch TV, a dull sitcom from the 60s.

My little brothers retreat from the living room to the front porch. Still complaining, Mom continues into the kitchen. I can hear the kettle being filled with water for coffee as Terri heads up the stairs toward her room, calling for Tina to follow.

When Mom’s mood plummets, everyone knows to leave her alone. She makes coffee, calls one of her sisters, or just sits at the kitchen table, staring across the room. This has been going on for as long as I can remember. When I was little, Mom would regularly throw everyone out of the house. I remember staggering into the afternoon sunlight, after being in the cool of the living room, curled up with a book. Mom would say, “Run around, play! Have fun like a normal kid, for Christ’s sake.”

Although I can go hang out with my new friends at their apartment on Front Street, I decide to hold my ground here in the living room instead. I haven’t had an opportunity to swipe any cigarettes, and I hate to arrive at the girls’ apartment empty handed. I focus on the TV, even though I’m not that interested in the program.

Mom stands in the entrance to the living room.

“Out,” she commands.

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May 03 2008
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movies

Iron Man

This is one of the best superhero movies so far.

I’m not sure what it is about superhero movies. I was so familiar with the Spiderman origin story I found the first Spiderman movie somewhat dull. Here is the big probem: You have to be loyal to the superhero source material, but then you risk boring the biggest fans of the material. I wasn’t as familiar with Iron Man, so I enjoyed seeing the story come to life.

Robert Downey Jr. is an excellent Tony Stark. Where most superhero movies are speical effects bonanzas, this is more of a character driven story with great visuals of giant robot fights. Good fun!

Stay to see the end credits: great easter egg at the end.

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May 01 2008
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family

Yard Work is Hard Work

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I taught Aaron how to mow the lawn two weeks ago. He was excited. That was two weeks ago. This week his excitement seems somewhat diminished, but now I’m excited. It’s much easier to get the lawn done with his help. I’m paying him five bucks (a five dollar buck, as he calls it) for the front and the back (roughly 2000 square feet).

If you’re paying your child more, please just keep it to yourself. 

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Apr 27 2008
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movies

Rocket Science

I saw this last weekend and loved it. It’s coming of age story, featuring Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson), a high school boy with a speech impediment. Hal doesn’t get the girl. Doesn’t learn how to speak normally. His father and mother break up and never get back together. His speech therapist acknowledges early on that he isn’t going to be much help. In fact, the only triumph in the entire movie involves Hal ordering a slice of pizza. Despite all this, it’s a feel good movie.

Highly recommended.

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Apr 25 2008
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family

Fort Project: The Grand Finale

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I put on the rail last week (between hail storms).

The fort project took just under a year to complete, but it’s finally done, and I’m happy with the results. The kids are pleased. Holly is pleased. Dad is exhausted!

Kidding. After all, I took a year to finish.

Here is a guided tour:

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Inside, looking toward the front porch, with escape hatch.

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Looking up the hatch.

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The main entrance.

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Looking down the rope ladder.

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The view from the hammock.

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The long climb.

All I can say is I must have wanted one of these when I was a kid. Otherwise, why would I have spent some much time and energy building it?

What a fun project!

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Apr 20 2008
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books

April Snow

It’s been snowing off and on this weekend in the greater Seattle area. When the snow isn’t coming down, it’s been sunny and mild. Pinwheeling between cold and hot all weekend long, I am reading Dinty Moore’s Between Panic and Desire. Good book.

Lousy weather.

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Apr 19 2008
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Uncategorized

Hard Out Here for a Blogger

 

This site can be a challenge to maintain.

WordPress, the software that powers this blog, is a web application written in PHP with a MySQL backend. The nice thing about it is that it’s free and enjoys popular development of a lot of themes and widgets. The bad thing about it is that it’s free and enjoys a lot of theme and widget development. Wait, what?

Yes, you read that right: the good is the same as the bad.

Here is what usually happens: You upgrade the site to the latest version of WordPress and then realize that half your widgets don’t work and now your theme looks funky. With a local installation of WordPress, you could try stuff out before you commit to the live site. The drawback for me is that I know very little about programming in general, much less PHP programming. Worse, I’m a Windows dweeb, so Apache and MySQL are scary to me.

Enter XAMPP.

XAMPP is free software that installs Apache and MySQL so you have the infrastructure to setup a local copy of WordPress, even if you use Vista or XP. Download the Windows version of XAMPP. The installer worked fine for me; the zip file has batch files to get you running. Once you get it installed, use a broswer to go to http://localhost.

The web client for MySQL is phpMyAdmin. God only knows why it’s called phpMyAdmin. Use this tool to create a new database with utf8_unicode_ci collation.

Download the latest WordPress files and add them to the xampp\htdocs folder, wherever you installed xampp. In the WordPress files, use a text editor, like notepad.exe, to edit the wp-config-sample.php file.

Fill in the variables for DB_NAME, DB_USER, and DB_PASSWORD.

  • DB_NAME is whatever you named the database in phpMyAdmin.
  • DB_USER use root.
  • DB_PASSWORD leave blank.

Save the file as wp-config.php.

In your browser, go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php and follow the instructions.

You now have a locally copy of WordPress. Feel free to mess it up. If it all comes tumbling down (as we all know it must), you can just delete the WordPress files and start over again.

Next up we’ll figure out how to get the data from the live site onto the mirror site.

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Apr 14 2008
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family

Obama in the House

Looks like Barack Obama has a lot of support from my hometown. This is video of him, stumping in Steelton, at the local Steelworkers union hall over the weekend.

He is right about how the little towns, like Steelton, have been passed over economically for the past 25 years. But looking at the polls, he has his work cut out for him in Pennsylvania. I called my brothers and sisters to drum up some support, but nobody was home. Hopefully everyone was down on Front Street, cheering for Barack.

Reading about the news, I noticed that Steelton’s former mayor, George Hartwick, endorsed Obama for president earlier today. Here at Present Tense we endorsed Barack late last month.

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Apr 10 2008
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movies

Michael Clayton


I really enjoyed this movie.

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is world weary and slick. He fixes every lousy situation that comes up at his firm, but can’t muster the strength of will to fix his own broke down life. Interestingly, his home life is in about the same shape as his firm, but this is only revealed slowly over the course of the picture, by revealing how bad off the firm actually is (the poor state of Clayton’s home life is established early on). By the time you understand how bad off things are at the firm, Clayton has already begun to see the light with his family. But this change in Clayton isn’t obvious until the final scene: the last scene felt like a toss-up, whether Clayton was looking for a pay off, or following the redemption trajectory. For me, the ambiguousness at the end was the highlight of the entire picture.

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