It all started about six months ago when my wife’s company, for which she has been working about eight years, entered into negotiations with Google.  Early on, my wife and the position she fills was identified as a key person in a role that needed continuity and continuation after the acquisition.  We were flown to Pittsburgh with a few other key people in key roles prior to the signing of the deal to be wooed by Google.  The acquisition was dependent upon enough of the key roles agreeing to relocate to Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh was not at all like I expected.  I was expecting a grungy, grimy, city.  A city scarred and marred by the steel industry that used to be the economic mainstay of the region.  What I found was a growing and vibrant historical city with an urban feel unlike any town in Florida.  I found a city the revolved around the Steelers and the Penguins; a city so in love with their teams that their iconography and presence is ubiquitous and inescapable.

Sure; it’s got dark corners, neighborhoods, and alleys best steered away from; just like any other city.  It’s a city broken up into many little neighborhoods, boroughs, each with their own feel, flavor, culture, and history.  Because of the steel mill history, many of the middle class and blue-collar homes are on the waterfront while most of the upper class homes are further away in the hills.  It’s completely opposite of how Florida works – and I found that neat and interesting.

Google Offices in Pittsburgh (click for larger)

The Google offices are located near borough called Shady Side in a plaza called Bakery Square.  It’s the old Nabisco building.  I’ve been there, but have yet to see the Keebler Elves.  Not for lack of looking, though.

Still, there is magic in the building.  I’m not going to go into detail on the internals of the Google office; I’m sure there are plenty of articles and posts about how cool the place is.  They would be correct; it is pretty freaking cool.

I’ve been coding, architecting, managing, directing, and CTO-ing in the field for 24 years.  Based on my experience, I can say that working in an office like the Google office in Pittsburg would appeal to almost every developer I know.  Even their bathrooms are developer friendly, with notes and educational missives printed regularly above the toilets and urinals.  The one I saw while I was there was titled “Testing on the Toilet: Testing State versus Testing Interactions.”  I loved it.

Carey in Pittsburgh (click for larger)

As you know, I am a founding member of the myList team, the awesome social commerce app in Facebook you’re using if you like me.  myList is in Florida and in Arizona.  It is not in Pittsburgh.  I really believe in what we are doing here at myList.  So much so that I am electing to stay in Florida while my wife and daughter move to Pittsburgh.

This is the sucky part.  My son and I are staying in Florida while my wife and daughter go to Pittsburgh.  We’re going to manage just fine, though.  We found a great apartment in Shady Side, less than half a mile from the office and within walking distance of all the great shopping in the neighborhood.

I am going to fly up at least twice a month and spend the weekend with the ladies.  My son will come up with me monthly as well.  Carey and Ashlee will fly down to visit us as often as possible, although that will be more difficult when school is in session.

When I ride to Sturgis this year, I will swing through Pittsburgh on my way back down to Florida.  We’re going to have our houses “live-wired” together – with Facetime or a Google hangout running 24/7 between our living rooms.  All we need to do is walk in the living room to see each other and talk.  We will have dinner together every night this same way.

I’m keeping the dogs in Florida – simply because renting a place in Pittsburgh that will take the dogs is way more difficult than we expected.

It’s going to be an adventure – but we are looking forward to it.  This is the spice of life and I am so happy for my wife – she’s a Googler and proud of it.  And I am proud of her.

As many of you know, I am an amateur astronomer and NASA aficionado and have been for years.  In fact, many of my blog posts are about my geekiness and NASA fandom.  A sample of a couple of my NASA-related posts:

• STS-135 End of an Era
• Very Rare STS-134 and STS-135 Memorabilia

I have had hard hat tours of the VAB.  I have seen many of the behind-the-scenes views of NASA.  I have multiple friends that have worked at NASA for years, as engineers and, literally, rocket scientists.  And yet – this is the first time I have ever been invited not because of someone I know, but because of who I am.  A NASA nerd, a social maven, an astronomy geek.  This is, for me, a proud and defining moment.

I plan on sharing my journey through the innards of NASA as we celebrate the final journey of Atlantis.  I have lots of avenues open to me, but I think I need to keep it simple.  So, without further adieu, here is my high-level strategy.

I will post all of my high-res pictures taken with my Canon Digital Rebel via myList. as part of the KSC Atlantis fan page I have created in Facebook.

As Program Manager of myList, it is fitting that I use the technology I create to socially share these photos with a wide Facebook audience. If you have not liked the KSC Atlantis page I have created, please do so now; that way you get the updates on Facebook as I post them.

myList is a fantastic platform for sharing the things you love on Facebook and I highly recommend you take the time to play with the app and learn to love it as much as I do.

I will use Instagram for my lower-quality personal pictures, taken with my phone for “instant gratification” as I go through the tour.

I have Instagram connected to my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, so any photo published via Instagram will be simultaneously shared with my audiences on those platforms.   I’ll try not to use too many funky filters – the purpose of using Instagram is not to be “artsy” but to reach the widest possible audience as quickly and easily as possible.

I will use Facebook to publish all of my normal observations and status updates. Facebook is connected directly to my Twitter account, so all updates on Facebook will automatically go to my twitter audience.

The great thing about Facebook is that I have a number of followers and subscribers that hinge on my every update there.  Twitter is great, but I have a less personal following there; I tend to be more personally connected with my Facebook followers than I am with my Twitter followers.  Using Facebook to publish these quick status updates allows me to appease both audiences.

I will use my blog to provide in-depth analysis and reviews of the Social after the event.

My blog has a nice following, although I have been neglecting it of late as my duties at myList have been pressing on me.  This blog will memorialize, summarize, and organize all of the content I generate as part of this event.  My blog posts are also automatically connected with my Twitter account, so the second I publish my blog, my Twitter followers get the update.

That’s it;  my publishing strategy in a nutshell.  Have I missed anything?  Feedback and comments are most appreciated.

I am not proud of myself right now. I did something I find personally despicable and I can’t, for the life of me, understand why I did it. In a thoughtless moment, I responded to a situation in a callous manner. I treated another human being poorly.

Here’s the down-low; I was driving to work this past Saturday. It was a big day for myList; the first NBC broadcast of the IRONMAN World Championship, presented by myList, was about to be aired. Hundreds of thousands of people were going to see the broadcast and see the myList branding everywhere. As a result, we expected a significant traffic spike on our servers and I needed to be there to manage it with the rest of the development and product team.

It’s fair to say I was a little anxious. I had been working for two weeks to scale our infrastructure to handle the anticipated load surge. Should the spike in traffic cause us to crash, my neck was on the line. As Program Manager, successes belong to the team, but failures belong to me. I knew we had done all the right things, but I was still nervous. Had I planned accordingly? Had we failed to anticipate some variable? Were we ready?

All of these thoughts an anxieties were in my mind as I drove towards the Interstate. I pulled up to the light on Michigan and Orange Blossom Trail. My windows were down; it was a beautiful day, and I had the music playing lightly. I was in “work mode” and focused only on getting to the office.

I barely noticed when a homeless man started walking towards my car. I paused momentarily in my thoughts of work to note that he should have crossed the street at the cross walk instead of in the middle of the street. I looked down at the clock on my radio, noting the time. When I looked back up again, the homeless man was less than 10 feet from my car and angling directly towards me.

Stopped at a light in the ghetto. My windows were down. I should have realized that he was going to approach me and ask for money.

Annoyed, for no good reason, I looked at him and in a commanding, authoritative, voice, I commanded him to “keep on walking.”

Without missing a beat, the homeless man sighed, looked away, and started shuffling to the front of my car to finish crossing the street. I was actually proud of myself for about three seconds. I was strong and in command. I said exactly what I felt and it created the desirable result; the man had stopped his approach and moved way.

About ten seconds later, as I was starting to drive through the intersection, it hit me. I had just treated another human being like garbage. I had shown a despicable and callous disregard for someone simply because he had interrupted my thoughts of work. For a brief moment, I did not see a fellow human, but something less.

This man was at the bottom – the rock bottom. For whatever reason, his existence had been reduced to relying on the compassion of strangers to make ends meet. He was once a proud man, I am sure. He held a job. Had a family. Had a life. And now, here he was, in threadbare clothes begging for change on a Saturday afternoon.

And I gave him only contempt.

I am ashamed of myself. The fact that I do give spare change to homeless people when I have it means nothing. In this case, I was a cad. There is a courage, grace, and bravery in begging. This man did not judge me for saying no, but I judged him for asking. He just sighed and walked away.

And I, not he, was left the lesser man.

But you don’t have to touch the flesh to know that the nerves are dead and that you feel, quite literally, nothing where the scalpel sliced your neck wide open. You can feel the non-feeling. A distant “tug,” when you swivel your head from side to side. A phantom flesh feeling – after almost forty years of having sensation you’re acutely aware of the lack.

Your left ear rings. All the time. Constantly. They told you it’s a side effect of the chemotherapy and that if it didn’t subside in a year, it never would. It’s been almost four years. You know you’re stuck with the ringing for life, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. Your mind has the wonderful ability to tune out the sound so you’re barely aware of it most of the time. Your mid-range is shot to hell. You can’t hear a thing if someone tries to talk to you and there is background noise. Again, the chemo did this to you.

The inside of your neck, on the left side, is hard to the touch. Under your skin, a mass of scar tissue has taken over the inside of your neck and esophagus. This is from the thirty-five radiation treatments you had to endure as they burned the good flesh to kill the cancerous flesh inside your body.

The radiation had other effects as well. You lost all of the salivary gland on the left side of your neck. You can’t eat without a sip of water with every bite. You can’t go more than half an hour without water to quench your parched throat. You’re embarrassed to eat in front of others because your food often gets caught in the desert of your throat and you gag and bring food back up just so you can try to swallow it again.

You get lockjaw and sudden painful neck cramps all the time. Your neck is deformed on the left side as a result of the surgery that removed your cancer. Your doctor took good flesh along with the bad to ensure the cancer was fully removed. Half of the neck muscle has been removed and lockjaw and cramps are the permanent side-effect you’re forced to endure.

You have a massive hiatal hernia and a near-constant pain under your ribs as a result. The feeding tube that punctured your abdominal wall weakened the muscles in the entire area. When you recovered and started working out again, you didn’t realize how weak your core muscles were as a result of that feeding tube and you ripped your muscles wide open, creating the hernia by doing chin-ups in your living room doorway.

Your cancer has been gone for nearly four years now. You hope it never returns, but you live in constant fear of it. This is your biggest scar, this fear of a recurrence of your cancer. Every ache, every pain, every physical anomaly sends you spiraling into a pit of despair. You hate going to see a doctor now, after so much poking, prodding, invasive surgeries and instruments, and yet you get antsy and your anxiety skyrockets if you don’t see your oncologist every few months.

When you emerged from your cancer battle with your first clean scan behind you, you made a promise to live more fully, more passionately, more intensely. Just….more. You did exactly that, for a while. You reveled in your new lease on life. You were happy in a way you had never been happy before. You were active, involved in the community, and full of vim and vigor.

And then, one day, you realized that you had sunk into the same tired routines you had lived with your entire life before the cancer. Sure there are differences, you are a better man than you were before, but you have not come close to realizing the dreams and promises you had made to yourself when your life lease had been extended. The millions of lilliputian stresses and decisions in your life have dragged you down and anchored you into mediocrity.

So here you sit, smiling mirthlessly at your computer screen as you type this. It’s midnight and you’re in a darkened room, wondering where you went wrong. You’re a cancer survivor. You’re one of the lucky ones. You have a wonderful life. A beautiful, loyal, and devoted wife as well as three wonderful children share this life with you. But you know you haven’t reached your potential – that you are not living as completely or fully as you promised yourself you would.

You keep telling yourself that this dark cloud that hangs over your head will go away when you reach the five year mark. That’s a lie and you know it. Your fear of a future with cancer is preventing you from moving forward. One step forward and two steps back. You live in fear of cancer. Intellectually you know that you need to manage this anxiety – that a fear of a possible future shouldn’t affect your present. Emotionally, though, underneath that thin veneer of logic, you’re gibbering in terror at the thought of cancer finding you again.

Curious that you always come back to this. You’re a hypocrite. You want people to see you as strong, brave, and as a survivor – but you spend your days filled with doubt and fear. Your heart is pounding even as you type, because the act of writing about it makes you think about it. Sometimes it beats so hard you feel like it is going to explode out of your chest.

But no one ever sees this. They see only what you want them to see. A man in control. Strong. If they only knew how full of unspent angst and anxiety you are.

Maybe that’s what all cancer survivors do, you muse. Maybe they all have the same fears you do and they all keep it bottled inside. The image of this amuses you; millions of survivors walking around living seemingly normal lives and yet harboring a secret terror and shame inside that they think is unique to them alone.

Shame. That’s the word you’ve been looking for. You’re ashamed of yourself for not being more than you are. You’re a smart man, you tell yourself. If you’re not happy, change something. Change anything. The definition of insanity of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time. You know that the only thing you can change is yourself.

Are you strong enough to change? Can you rise above the fear that has held you back and prevented you from being the man you said you wanted to be?

You don’t know – but you do know that evolution is gradual – tiny changes over time to create a whole new species. You know you can’t make grand statements and sweeping changes and hope to succeed.

You feel a little better having recognized and acknowledged your fear and shame. Tomorrow, you decide, you’re going to make a small change in your life. Tomorrow, you’re going to look at that scar on your neck in the morning and smile at it – not taking for granted that you are alive.

I called him grandpa

He was one of the most influential people in my life. That’s not a claim I make lightly. If you think about it, we all know hundreds of people. We meet thousands of people every year. Some are people you bump into at the grocery store and never see again. Some become fast friends. Some are family. If you’re on Facebook you probably even have friends you’ve never met. It’s safe to say that I have met tens of thousands of people in my lifetime and my grandpa tops the list of people who have molded me into the man I am today. I’d like to spend a few moments talking about my grandpa – giving you a glimpse of how I saw him.

Each of you knows my grandpa. Many of you know him in ways I can never know or understand. If I’m lucky, some of you will share your stories about grandpa with me this afternoon.

So where do I start? My earliest memories are on my grandparents farm in Southern Indiana. My memories of that time were when I was just a child much younger than my three teenaged children here today. Grandpa’s great-grandchildren.

Learning to Shoot a Rifle

I could tell you about how grandpa taught me how to fire a rifle. On that farm we had two barns. We had one that was the “regular barn” and we had one we called the Tobacco barn. Between the two were one of the fields where we planted crops. Sometimes nuisance groundhogs would plague the field and threaten the crop.

Before I continue let me tell you about the Tobacco barn. The tobacco barn was a mess. It was dilapidated, dingy, and falling apart. Grandpa warned me several times to never go into the Tobacco barn. It was dangerous. I believed him. I never thought to question or doubt. It was a scary barn, just to look at.

I don’t like to be a tattletale, but I just found out yesterday, though, that my sister Rhonda regularly disobeyed the command to steer clear of the tobacco barn and went climbing through it all the time.

So anyway, between the tobacco barn and the regular barn were fields where we planted crops and groundhogs were a nuisance. They could dig holes so deep that a tractor would literally tip over if it hit the hole. Shooting the groundhogs was a necessity – for safety reasons and to save the crop.

I remember my grandfather handing me the rifle. He spent time showing me how to operate the gun, the safety rules of handling the gun, how to aim, and how to slowly pull, not jerk, the trigger. I grabbed the rifle from grandpa, sighted down the barrel, and I fired that rifle downfield at the groundhogs. I missed, of course, and the recoil from the rifle knocked me backwards and hurt my shoulder. The sound of the shot being fired startled and scared me. Grandpa chuckled, and handed the rifle back to me, even though I was suddenly afraid of it. Because that’s what he did; he taught without teaching. He led by example. He knew I was afraid, but he just handed the rifle back to me and let me make the choice to try again.

Grandpa taught me my love and respect for firearms. And he also passed it on to my children. A few weeks before this last Christmas, I took grandpa and my oldest son Matthew to the gun range. At 86 years of age, shooting from a partially blind eye, grandpa managed to hit his target every single time with a spread no larger than my hand.

Iced Tea

1945 – Ronald and Hershel Sparks

One of my favorite stories about my grandpa is the story about iced tea. Every day, for 45 years, grandma would serve grandpa a glass of iced tea with dinner. Every day, without ever saying a word, grandpa would drink that glass of iced tea.

One day, though, after 45 years, he asked my grandmother why she always served him iced tea. Her reply? “Because you like it.” He told her he had never liked iced tea. For 45 years, without complaint, he drank what his wife provided him. A child of the depression, grandpa learned to be thankful for what he had.

I think about that a lot. About how spoiled I am. I have never wanted for anything. I have never been hungry. If my waitress at the restaurant brings me the wrong drink I get offended and send it back with much todo. And my grandpa never complained about being served a beverage he didn’t like. For 45 years. I don’t know anyone else like that.

License to Drive

Grandpa taught me how to drive. He taught my sister and brother, Rhonda and Russell, as well. His exact words were he “wanted to make sure we did it right.” He spent decades behind the wheel of a truck and cars and the road were a major defining part of his life. He owned dozens of cars throughout the years. I think he bought new cars more often than he bought new pants.

When I was 16-years-old he spent a week looking for, and finally paying for half, of my first car. A lime green 1974 Mercury Comet. He taught me how to change the oil, tune it up, change the tires, and keep it road-worthy. Most of his lessons stuck, but I did have one incident.

I had been driving only a couple of months when my friend and I decided to drive to Cocoa Beach. You all know the route, SR 50 to 520 and all the way to the beach. This was before 520 was widened and it was a 2-lane road all the way to the beach. On the way back from the beach, I got a flat tire.

I wasn’t worried. My grandpa had taught me how to change a tire and I had not one, not two, but three spare tires in the car. I couldn’t tell you why I had that many spares. I just did. I jacked the car up, changed the tire, and we were on our way home in less than ten minutes.

We got a mile down the road when the same tire went flat again. So I changed the tire again. And got a mile down the road when the same tire went flat again. I was down to my last spare.

I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. I put the last spare on, crossed my fingers, and started for home again. And got another flat tire.

This was way before cell phones, so my buddy and I had to hitchhike to a station and call his mom to come get us. Grandpa had taught me how to change a tire, but he didn’t think he needed to explain the obvious to me. Keep the tire valve on the outside when you change the tire.

When I told him what I had done – much later I might add – he just shook his head, called me a fool, and walked away.

1970′s – Ronald and Hershel Sparks

The Bad Guys

Grandpa’s years behind the wheel of a truck gave him the strongest forearms of anyone I have ever met. He was driving for years before these trucks were equipped with power steering. He fought the truck every day, and won.

I didn’t understand as a child where that strength came from, I only knew that he was just about the strongest man I could imagine.

He played a game with us grandkids. He called it “the bag guys.” He would trap our wrists between two fingers and squeeze. Using only a fraction of the strength in his hands and arms, he would send me and my brother to the floor, writhing in pain and begging for release. And we always went back for more.

The worst, though, was when he sat next to me in church. When no one was looking he would get me with the bad guys and squeeze once, quickly, and let go. The sudden shock and pain always caused me to jump straight up like I’d sat on a pin and cry out.

Of course, I always got in trouble for disturbing church. And he sat there, never said a word, and winked at me when no one else was looking.

Just a few short weeks ago he got me in the bad guys again. At 86 years of age, they still hurt.

Grandpa and his Stories

Grandpa had a story for everything. I think he was perhaps the most interesting man in the world. He only recently started sharing some of his stories from the War, and we were all shocked and amazed by what he had to say. Everything from his trip by boat to and from Europe to his wounding, subsequent capture and status as a POW, and his liberation and return home. Stories about how the allies strafed the train he was on taking him to the prison camp, not knowing that it was filled with American POWs. Stories about how he was forced to dig his own grave in Stalag 9b when a prisoner killed a guard for a scrap of food. How he somehow kept on his person through the entire ordeal was a small New Testament given to him before he left for war.

Those stories horrify us even now, more than half a century later. The things he saw. The things he endured. Unimaginable to those of us from softer times.

My favorite stories, though, are his stories about being on the road. He could, literally, regale you with hours of stories from being on the road.

One of my favorites of all time, of the hundreds he told, was the story regarding the truck stop with outhouses instead of modern plumbing. This was in the early 1950s, I believe. The guys at the truck stop had run a speaker from the diner into the outhouse – into the, ahhh, toilet part of the outhouse. They would wait for ladies to enter the outhouse, give them time to start their business, and then turn on the microphone and holler through the speaker, “HEY LADY! WE’RE WORKING DOWN HERE!” Grandpa couldn’t tell the story without chuckling and describing how the ladies would run out of the outhouse in a complete panic.

January 2010 – Ronald and Hershel Sparks

Grandpa and His Love for Grandma

Grandpa loved grandma. He was so proud to have her at his side. Recently, one of his favorite stories was how, just a couple of years ago, the regulars at McDonalds were flirting with grandma. He thought she was so beautiful. You could always see it in how he looked at her. Through the good times, the bad and everything in between, his love for her, his dedication, responsibility, and commitment never wavered.

Grandma and grandpa had a love that lasted over 67 years. It might surprise some of you to know that they had met, fell in love, and eloped in a span of time only a few weeks before he shipped out to war.

As his health began to deteriorate he stressed to my father, me, and my sister and brother that we had to take care of grandma when he was gone. He would tell me “don’t worry about me; you just make sure your grandma is ok.” His greatest treasure was my grandma.

Being a Great-Great-Grandpa

Grandpa lived to see five generations spawned from the love him and grandma shared. He was very proud of this, and he loved and adored little Savannah. Savannah would sit in front of grandpa on the living room floor, babbling at him for hours. And he would look at her, nod, and say, over and over again in response to her, “I know.” “I know.” “I know.”

And Savannah’s first sentence was “I know.”

And apparently she does know. From what I hear, you can’t tell her anything. She knows it all – her great-great-grandpa told her so.

My grandfather, Ronald C. Sparks, getting the Purple Heart during WWII

The witticism of Grandpa

Grandpa always had something snappy to say. Over the years some of his more colorful quips have become almost institutionalized in the family.

He would often jest with my grandmother when they had a minor disagreement. He would glare at her and say “woman, don’t make me mad.” I liked that so much that I use it now, in jest, with my wife Carey all the time.

The last few years grandpa has been fond of saying, when asked how he was feeling, “I could run down a rabbit, if I shoot it first.”

He would often look at grandma and jest, saying either “I’m gonna trade her in for a younger model,” or “that’s the last time I go out with an older woman.” Grandma is only a month older than him.

When imparting wisdom to me, he would stress often, “never bring a knife to a gunfight.”

And of course, one of my favorites was how he constantly teased my, my siblings, and his great grandkids, calling is “rotten kids” every time he saw us.

Conclusion

I miss my grandpa. He was a great man. An American hero, a dedicated husband, an honest man. He was hard, but fair. I loved him deeply, as I know all of you did.  He is my role model and I will continue to walk in his footsteps and, if Im lucky, I’ll be half the man he was.

Grandpa and me at my wedding on October 11, 2009

I view this launch with mixed feelings, as I am sure most of America and the world does as well. I grew up with the space shuttle program and it was the NASA I knew and understood. I was born just a tad too late for Apollo.

On Sunday April 12, 1981, at exactly 7 :00am, I was sitting at home, getting ready for church, less than five miles away from the launch pad, when Columbia launched on STS-1. My dad was stationed at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach and I was just barely 11-years-old. I remember being afraid as the windows started rattling and rushing outside to see the launch. From that point on I was hooked on NASA. Here is a video of that first launch of STS-1.

Anything was possible – we were sending men into space in a reusable launch vehicle. It took off like a rocket and landed like an airplane. It was just the beginning of America’s continued leadership in manned spaceflight and exploration of our solar system. I wanted to be an astronaut. I purchased every astronomy magazine and cut out the pictures of stars, planets, nebula, spacecraft, and NASA-related images. I plastered my entire wall with these images – hundreds of them – and I would sit and stare, and dream, at them for hours at a time.

T-Minus 31 seconds for STS-135

I was a 15-year-old young man on January 28, 1986 when the Challenger exploded. I had stayed out of school that day for an early morning dentist appointment. We had moved from Cocoa beach to Orlando by that time, but every launch was still clearly visible from our house. My dad and I were on our way back home from the dentist listening to AM radio (because that’s all Dad ever listened to) when we heard the launch. We pulled over to the side of the road just as we had entered our sub-division to watch the launch. I remember knowing, instantly, what had happened when I saw the shuttle explode. We rushed home to watch the news and I remember crying for hours – my heroes were killed.  That was my first experience with the “media frenzy” that is the norm today – hour upon hour of repeated and continuous coverage of te same thing with little or no new details emerging.  Here is a video of that tragic moment.

On February 1, 2003, I was a 32-year-old man living in Orlando with two young children who were both NASA nerds like myself; I had passed the joy, awe, and wonder of space travel on to both of my boys. They had crawled into bed with me and we were watching the re-entry on TV when, at 9:00am, the shuttle disintegrated. My oldest son started crying; his heroes had been killed. I knew exactly how he felt and I too wept, as much for his lost innocence as the astronauts who died.   Here is a video of that disaster.

I grew up with the success and tragedies of the Space Shuttle program. Because of Challenger, I KNEW space exploration was dangerous and I held my breath every time the shuttle launched. I was saddened by the fact that so many people considered space travel so mundane that they didn’t even watch the shuttles launch anymore. The space shuttle had brought space travel to the masses, had made it ordinary. And public interest lagged in the entire program until and unless there was a tragedy.

Now here I am, a 41-year-old man and I just watched the last launch of the Space Shuttle program. 30 years of my life has been defined by NASA and the space shuttle program. This is a bittersweet moment for me. If you were to walk into my house, you would see all sorts of NASA paraphernalia. I have autographed pictures from Alan Bean, the late Wally Shirra, Buzz Aldrin, and more. I have 20+ astronaut autographs, mission patches, watches, etc – all commemorating NASA and our space program.    The “NASA wall” I had as a kid still exists, but in a more mature form now – autographed pictures, memorabilia, posters, stamps, coins, and books.

There’s no doubt that the shuttle program was a “magnificent failure” as former astronaut Duane Carey told the media. Of the five shuttle built, two were destroyed. Of the planned 50 launches a year we barely managed 9 at the best of times. As a way of keeping costs down through the use or reusable launch vehicles, it failed. The shuttle is the most complicated and expensive piece of equipment ever built – and the support structure for it crippled NASA from funding other projects for decades. It was the first of 3 steps Nixon era scientists saw as a ways to put a man on Mars – a dream never fulfilled or realized.

The space shuttle stifled any research and exploration that wasn’t near-earth based. The shuttle became a bus that went 220 miles in a trip. We stopped looking to the stars while the shuttle was ferrying passengers up and down.

And yet it cannot be said that the program was a complete failure. It brought the nations of the world together. Many, many scientific discoveries were made. We sent ambassadors, teachers, and representatives from all over the world into space on the shuttle. We built a space station. We furthered medical research immensely because of the shuttle.

I am sad that, for the first time since the birth of our space program, America doesn’t have a way to get astronauts into space. We’re relying on Russians to get us there now. We have given up manned spaceflight supremacy. Is this a sign? Have we given up on manned space flight? Will we ever see the moon again? Will we ever walk on Mars?

I am nervous about the future of our space agency. I have friends who work at NASA and they are now looking for jobs. The economy isn’t in the best spot. I agree intellectually that the space shuttle needed to be retired, but I did hope that we would have had a replacement program in place – and we don’t. So, NASA, what’s next?

Life out of balance

I’m an optimist.  I’ve come to realize this over the past few years, much to the surprise of many.  I always hope for the best but am afraid of the worst.  Maybe I’m a little more manic about my fears and concerns now that I have faced cancer, but I am essentially an optimist.  It’s been very hard to remain optimistic this past year, and now that I am on the cusp of my 41st birthday I have been doing a lot of thinking about my 40th year of life, and how unbalanced it has been.

It was an interesting year, filled with many highlights and, unfortunately, more than my fair share of low points as well.  It was my first full year married to my gorgeous wife.  I hit the 2-year cancer free mark in my 40th year.  My job was great and I got to travel quite often.  I managed to squeeze in a few mini-vacations throughout the year, including an almost 2000-mile motorcycle road trip and a cruise.  My grandfather got a pacemaker installed and his quality of life improved dramatically.  My brother, sister, and I grew closer than ever as a result of the trials we endured together.  All good things.

I also suffered for months in abdominal pain until my gall bladder was finally removed.  My wife and I had to deal with miscarriage.  I lost my mom after a 3-month battle for survival.  I lost a dear friend to cancer.

Now, here I sit, typing this blog while in severe shoulder pain.  I didn’t do anything significant to cause the pain, but it has been constant and relentless for almost a month now.  I’m fairly certain that all my years of martial arts and boxing have caught up to me, but I won’t know for sure until I see the orthopedic surgeon next month.

I often wonder, is this my new life?  A life of constant anxiety about my medical condition?  A life of fear, seeing a recurrence of my cancer in every ache or pain?  One where I start revolving around my medical condition(s) and the medical conditions of others as the central theme in my life?  Is it all downhill from here?

Have I become . . . old?

Honestly, sometimes, when I hit a low point, I think maybe I am getting old before my time.  Cancer has left me with a nasty condition – a kind of PTSD.  It’s a psychological trauma that affects me every second of every day.  While I have a much greater appreciation of every breath I take, I also am acutely aware of how fragile life is and how little control I have over . . . well, anything. I fear the future while at the same time being so happy that I am alive and able to contemplate my future.  I sometimes fear my coping mechanisms are stressed and I may have a mini-breakdown.

I feel that way sometimes, but then I remember that last year was a year when my entire life was out of balance, for all the reasons listed above.  The Hopi word for that is “koyaanisqatsi.”  It translates to ”crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.”  This is not the way I normally live my life – external events impacted me to such a degree that my entire equilibrium was upset.  My life was thrown out of balance.

All sorts of things happen when your life is out of balance.  For me, I gained more weight than I wanted, I worried (still do) incessantly about my health and harbored a fear of my cancer recurring.  I let stress affect my health, my outlook, and my behaviors.  I focused on the wrong things in my life and didn’t give enough attention to the things that really mattered.  I was filled with self-loathing and self-doubt.  I was Out.  of.  Balance.

Like I said, though, I am also an optimist.  I can get my balance back.  While I have all the fears and angst mentioned above, I feel strongly that 2011, my 41st year, will be better and less stressful than my 40th.  Every 3 months I get confirmation that my cancer is still gone.  My abdominal issues have all but disappeared.  My shoulder pain is trivial compared to everything else I have gone through.  My wife and I are moving into our second full year of marriage.  I have wonderful and intelligent kids.  I have good friends and a good job.  Most importantly, though, I choose to be happy and reduce the stress in my life.  I choose to focus on the positives.  I choose to regain my balance.

Carey and I made a commitment to each other when we rang in the new year – a commitment to relax more and stress less this year.  A year to focus on our health, both mental and physical.  It’s not easy – but I know that it’s the right thing to do.  Last year I lived  koyaanisqatsi.  There has to be a better way to live – and I will find it, with my wife and my family.

41 is not old.  It’s not all downhill from here.  I know I’ve had a rough few months and I need to let myself recover from that stress.  It’s natural to be a little burned out and even a little depressed coming on the heels of such a traumatic event as losing my mother.

A lot of you have expressed a similar feeling – a feeling that your life is out of balance and that events are out of your control.  I can’t help you with control – except to say that the sooner you realize you don’t really control anything the better you will be.  Balance, though, comes down to choice.  And the choice is yours.  If your life is koyaanisqatsi, choose to change it.

Personally, I’m only as old as I feel, and I really don’t feel that old.  Just . . . a little tired and out of balance.  But that’s changing.

Steve Zlatkiss (far right)

Set your way-back machine to early 1986. I was sixteen-years-old and I had mononucleosis. I was a skinny runt of a kid who lost way too much weight from his sickness.

My mom went up to the local video store, 16,000 Movies, and spent an hour telling the owner about her son. About how great he was and how he wanted to work there so badly (I did – all the hot girls worked there) and how I would be there myself but I was sufferring from a terrible illness. After an hour of beating him down, he finally agreed to hire me, sight unseen – most likely to get my mom to stop pestering him.

The owner of the video store was 24-year-old Steven Zlatkiss. I went to work as soon as I recovered from mono and learned what it was like to work for the demanding cult of personality that was Steve Zlatkiss. I stayed with Steve until late 1995, when the company was sold to Blockbuster Video.

It was the most amazing ten years of my life. I slowly earned respect and Steve took me under his wing. He taught me how to manage the store, then the stores (which grew to 17 locations all around Florida before we sold). He taught me how to demand nothing less than excellence from myself and from others. He was there when I married my first wife – paying for the honeymoon because we were too poor to go anywhere. He was there when my oldest son was born.

He taught me how to play craps in Atlantic City. He taught me how to negotiate and be confident in myself. He showed me how attitude was 90% of every business transaction. He, quite literally, taught me everything I know about the business world – which is why I still get in trouble for being too aggressive or speaking my mind too openly from time-to-time. Because that’s how Steve was – he held nothing back and if you screwed up, he let you know in no uncertain terms, and then he helped you fix your mistake and move on.

Steve was the enemy of political correctness. When Mark, the first black guy started working at the store, complained that someone said he was a “raisin in a bowl of milk” as the only black guy, Steve laughed loudly and said “That’s fucking incredible!” And walked away.

Steve Zlatkiss

His point?  Without saying a word, Steve taught us to find the humor in the bullshit.  Taught us to be thick-skinned to a point, to deal with our own problems and not expect anyone to help us, and to recognize when someone was a friend and when they were not.  20 years later, Mark Vitela and I are still great friends.  Along with the rest of the crew who worked together at 16,000 Movies.

Steve recognized that I had a gift for computers and started me on my career.   After breaking the computers in the video store over and over again with my juvenile attempts to learn the system he finally gave up and sent me to New Jersey for training.  I took my first professional programming course at the age of 18 – thanks to Steve.  And look at me now, Chief Technology officer of a company that manages millions of dollars of government and private sector IT contracts.  Thanks to Steve.

When Steve got married, in grand Jewish tradition, I was there applauding him.  When his first son was born, I was there laughing and crying with him.  When his son, at 8-days-old, had his brit milah (Jewish circumcision ceremony) I was there, cringing and trying not to be queasy.

When I moved back to Orlando and had the opportunity to buy an established karate school and run my first entrepreneurial business, Steve seeded me the money I needed to get started. It took me almost six months to pay him back, and the venture failed, but Steve never even blinked as he handed me the money.  We had trust.  We had friendship.

A year ago, Steve called me and told me he had incurable cancer and that his doctors had given him only three months to live.  He was fighting it, he said, and it was going to be a cold day in hell (his words) before he rolled over and gave up.  Steve wanted to know about my cancer treatments and how I dealt with them.

We talked at least once every two weeks from that point forward.  Steve was strong – and he didn’t want to appear weak in front of me.  Those moment were reserved for his family I am sure.  We made many plans to grab a bite to eat or to visit, but his illness was slowly getting the best of him and each plan was cancelled because of his condition.   And because of his life – Steve was a very busy man and he never stopped making plans, scheming or cutting deals with people.  Getting time with Steve had always been, as long as I knew him, a difficult task.

Steve and Mark Vitela at Steve's party a couple of months ago

Finally, though, Steve threw a party at his house for all the ex-employees of 16,000 Movies.  Such was the power of Steve, so much love had he instilled in his “crew” that nearly 100 of us showed up for that party.  Fifteen years after the the last  movie was rented at 16,000 Movies, nearly 100 of his ex-employees, his friends, showed up to celebrate with with  him.

Steve was amazed at how many people were there to show him love.  He knew, but never really understood, how much of an impact he had on all of our lives.  He shaped us, made us into who we are today.  He was a father-figure, friend, and parter in crime and he left a deep mark on all of us.

As I left the party, Steve hugged me and told me he loved me.  That was the last time I saw him.

Steve passed away on December 23, 2010 at the age of 48.  He beat his doctor’s estimates by over a year.  He went to Israel for non-FDA-approved treatments.  He bullied the FDA into letting him legally try an untried and unapproved drug to fight his cancer.  He never gave up and he beat that cancer back much, much longer than anyone ever thought he could.

And so, yesterday, on an appropriately bleak and bitter day, we buried Steve at the Temple Israel cemetery in Winter Garden.  He was surrounded by so many loving friends and family that it was standing room only.  It’s been less than a month since I buried my mother and it was extremely hard to deal with a second death of someone so close to me on the heels of my mom’s death.

My mom, member 225 at 16,000 Movies, and Steve always shared a bond that began when she bullied him into hiring a geeky 16-year-old kid.  Steve never, not once in over 25 years, let a conversation end without asking about my mom.

I will miss Steve greatly – he made me into the man I am and for that I will be forever grateful.  Rest in peace, my friend.

We don’t stress overmuch about choking on our food because, if we chew our food well enough the food will be much less likely to choke us.

We tend to mitigate our fears of getting mugged by parking in well-lit areas, not going alone into unknown areas, and knowing the “good” from the “bad” parts of town.

In short, we can control things.  We can control our fate.  Right?  We can create the eventualities we desire directly through our actions and behaviors.  We have control.

I used to think that way, people.  I used to firmly believe that my willpower alone could affect the outcome of events and happenings in my life.  You can imagine how big my shock must have been when I realized that I control, literally, nothing.

That’s right – and it’s the same with you.  You control NOTHING.

Think about the scenarios I listed above.  No matter what you do, you can’t control the actions of others on the road, so you are always at risk for a fatal accident.  No matter how much or how carefully you chew your food you can still choke to death.  No matter how safe you think you are there is always a chance you will get mugged, or worse.

What can we control then?  We can control our own actions and behaviors, right?

Not really.  To an extent, but even those actions and behaviors are a factor of biology, evolution, genetics, and cultural upbringing – all things over which you have no control.   It takes a Herculean effort to overcome the “baseline” behaviors and actions that are ingrained into you.

You can’t even control your own body.   I know.

Cancer is the biggest reality check in the world.  Nothing brings home the fact that you have control over NOTHING like realizing your own body has turned against you and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do about it.

Sure, there are things you can do to lessen your chance of getting cancer, but no one knows how much you decrease your chance.  You can eat lots of fruit.  You can not smoke.  You can make sure asbestos isn’t lining your walls.  You can avoid the sun.

All of those things might add up to keep you free from cancer.  But then again, they might not.

Once you actually have cancer, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.  Nothing.  Not a thing.  You can try positive visualization, prayer, changes in diet and exercise.  These things might make a difference.  But then again, they might not.

You cannot bargain with cancer.  All you can do is fight it as best you can.  Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy; these are the weapons at the forefront of the cancer battle nowadays.  They are by no means certain.  You can still lose the battle.

Anxiety About tomorrow Can Ruin Today

And you can’t control it.

So how do you deal with the knowledge that you control nothing?

Do you surrender?  Give up?  Say to hell with it, roll over, and die?  No.  You don’t do that – but the knowledge that you can’t control things gives you a certain sense of freedom.  When you realize you can’t control something you can choose to STOP trying to control that thing.

I can’t control whether or not my cancer will recur.  I can do certain things to mitigate my risk factors, but ultimately I have no control.  Living my life in fear of a possible eventuality is not an acceptable option – so I let go of the fear, I stop trying to control things I can’t control, and I live my life as best as I can.

I don’t always succeed.  Letting go is hard.  Especially in March and September of every year for me.   I have my 6-month PET scan coming up next week and my nerves are starting to get frayed as I worry about the results of the scan.

I can’t control what the results will be.  In fact, if I have a recurrence of my cancer it’s better to know as soon as possible, but the fear of the possible bad news is making me edgy, distracted, and a bit surly.

Next week I get my scans.  Wish me luck.  I’m having a hard time letting go this week.  I know I can’t control the outcome one way or another, but I keep looking for SOMETHING I can control – just to make myself feel better.

The thing is; I control nothing.   I have no control.

• You read about my transition into single life.
• You celebrated my children’s accomplishments.
• You were there as I ranted and raged against the universe.
• You experienced the earth moving love that developed between Carey and me.
• You cried with me and shared my pain as I fought for my life against cancer.
• You congratulated me when I proposed to Carey.
• You laughed with me at my goofy humor when I shared Pickle Surprise with you.
• You discussed and debated racial tensions with me.
• You grinned at my attitude and action as my chemotherapy started thinning my hair.
• You tried to tell me “I told you so” when Carey shanghaied me into a new puppy.
• You supported me when I left Channel Intelligence and got a new job as CTO of Hooah.
• You celebrated my much-anticipated wedding to the love of my life.
• You asked me how I saved over $200.00 a month by ditching my cable company.
• You applauded when I finally fixed my motorcycle after my cancer treatments.
• You energetically engaged me in a patriotic discussion.
• You laughed and were so happy when Carey became pregnant with our baby.
• You cried and comforted me when we lost the baby.
• You experienced the butt-numbing pain of a 1700-mile motorcycle ride with me.

You’ve been with me for years now, my loyal readers.  My blog has been my venue, my cathartic release, and my creative outlet for everything I think, feel, and experience in my life.

Thank you all for reading and being  a part of my life.  There’s definitely more to come!