Too confused to come up with a title
As you can see by the distance in the dates between posts, it's exceedingly difficult to turn my muddled thoughts into complete sentences. It's been a rough week here on the Edge. I'm basically living full-out -- working, parenting, moving into a new house -- between rings of a telephone. When the caller ID shows a "417" area code, everything stops. I can feel the friction on my the palm of my hand as I reach out to stop my spinning life. I answer, bracing for the worst by following the same procedure: A deep, deep breath precedes every "Hello." In that .6 of a second, I remind myself to not scream or collapse in a crying heap or punch a hole in the drywall if the news is bad.

Breath. Reminder. "Hello?"

My last remaining male role model is facing death square on. My uncle -- The Uncle Who Made Good -- suffered a brain aneurysm on Sunday. He is hospitalized in Anytown, surrounded by his wife, his two sons, and about a hundred friends and family members. The prognosis is neutral, leaning toward positive; much will be learned about his future over the weekend, and then a surgery tentatively scheduled for mid-week will provide

Uncle John is my dad's next oldest brother, No. 5 of nine children and the undisputed leader of our sprawling yet close family. In times of need, he's the guy people turn to. He is by all measures a success. He married a stunningly beautiful woman more than 30 years ago. He started a business from scratch at age 33; less than 20 years later, he began enjoying a very comfortable retirement. He and my aunt raised two sons who are on their way to their own success.

He has more basic intelligence and more common sense than any two people I've ever known, and I've known a lot of very smart people. But Uncle John is the standard. From him, I learned to always remember from where I came, and that my first loyalty is to my family.

It is from him that I received the most important piece of advice I ever received: "Be sure you tell your kids every day that the world is a better place because they're in it." Like he is about most other things, he's right.

I lost my own father at 19 -- he's still alive, but not enough to provide the guidance an adult child needs. He sometimes struggled with providing this guidance even before his accident. When I stumped him with a question or a concept, my Dad would say, "Ask Uncle John. He'll know, and he'll give you a straight answer." To this day, I'll follow that advice.

Uncle John couldn't replace my father and, to his credit, he didn't try. But he filled many of the gaps, and he sets an example that I bust my ass every day to follow.

We're not a very demonstrative family when it comes to affection. Under normal circumstances, we're more likely to insult each other than to prattle on about how great one of us is. But when things turn, we're there -- even if we can't be there physically, we're there for each other. My cousins know they can call me at 3 in the morning if they want, and if they do, they'll find somebody on the other end of the line who knows exactly how they're feeling. If or when my presence in Anytown becomes necessary -- for my cousins, for any of my aunts or uncles, for my dad or stepmother or sister -- I'm on the next flight out.

Until then, I hope. I listen for the phone. I try to stop my over-caffeinated world from spinning long enough to compose a cohesive thought. I remember who I am and where I came from and why I am who I am. And I wait for things to settle down to tell one of the most important people in my life how important he is.

That's an opoortunity you can be damn sure I'm not going to miss.

Confidential reminder
I read somewhere once about my family: "We're a family of survivors." I need to keep that in mind right now.

Technical interlude
Having finally become completely fed up with Microsoft and everything for which it stands, I'm taking up arms. I'm doing battle against the giant from Redmond, Wash.

So far I'm 1-1.

E-mail: When I downloaded the latest patch to fix yet another security flaw in Windows XP, it somehow tore my Outlook Express all asunder. When I attempt to send an e-mail, a little box comes up trying to locate some plug-in for Microsoft Picture It! 2002 (which I own but have never used). It does this through about three or four "Cancels," then finally, a dialog pops up: "The spelling check is not complete. Would you like to send anyway?" Of course, it had never executed a spellcheck.

This frustration led me through a few other e-mail clients. Can't recommend Mozilla; loads much too slowly, and the spellchecker wants to stop on everything. Can't recommend Opera; if you try to set any security at all, it clamps down and basically won't allow anything to happen.

I did find a winner: Eudora, which has been around for years and years in various forms but gets little exposure, largely because it somehow hasn't found favor as a corporate e-mail client.

Eudora 6's interface is fresh and incredibly easy-to-use -- once you get used to it. I found myself clicking around more than I needed to, thinking, "This really shouldn't be this easy." Being cheap, of course, I'm using the ad-sponsored version -- the ads are unintrusive, and they're clearly not selling well; I've only seen one ad from a company other than Qualcomm, which makes the software. I have all of the features of the paid version that I need, and I'm not dropping $49.95. A stripped-down, ad-free version is also available. If you're a Windows user, it's worth the switch.

Web browser: Back when I was a full-time Mac user, I was also a full-time Netscape user. I first started hitting the web about the time Netscape 3.x was the only game in town for graphical browsers. I upgraded to Netscape 4.0, and was a little worried, because the program didn't seem as stable as its predecessor. I then migrated to Windows, and slavishly used Internet Explorer from that point, only launching Netscape for nostalgia.

When Netscape 6 appeared, after AOL bought Netscape, I was all ready to start using Netscape again. A fully loaded, cool-looking interface wrapped around the browser of my technical youth. But alas, Netscape 6 sucked. Slow as hell, crashed a lot, didn't render some sites correctly, completely useless on secure sites.

I've been faithfully downloading each new Mozilla release; it's the open-source version of Netscape, using the same basic architecture as the AOL crew but in a more compact way. Because it's beta software, it's pretty buggy, too, but I do like it for some uses -- particularly viewing video. Its pop-up blocker is pretty solid, maybe a little too solid (it blocks solicited pop-up windows, too.)

I decided to check in on Netscape, just to see how version 7.1 looked. I had read and heard bad things about version 7, but I wanted to see for myself.

Terrible.

Installed seamlessly (including, of course, the damn AOL solicitation); crashed on launch; crashed on restart; crashed on exit; crashed while uninstalling.

So I'm back to Internet Explorer, waiting for some hacker to come in and steal my keystrokes. But at least it works. It has earned its 98 percent market share.

Potentially unpopular opinion
Don Zimmer had it coming.

[Deep sigh]
That's all. That's all I have to offer tonight.

Random stray thought

Different things keep me awake at night. All of them are keeping me awake tonight. I hate that.

More on the Epiphany, as promised
The solution: Quit talking about it and actually do it.

I could launch a commercial airliner with all the energy I've expended over the last two years babbling about:

How much I dislike my job

How I need to do something different with my life

How I need to exercise more/eat better/sleep more

How I need to find some source of actual inspiration.

It's been two years. The time to talk has passed. I'm tired of talking about it. You're tired of hearing about it.

So:

It's time. Self-improvement plan starts with ...

... finishing my bachelor's degree.

Somehow.

---------------------------------

I don't consider myself anybody's intellectual inferior. The one thing that distinguishes me from the rest of the population is that I have a fairly sharp mind. I'm very capable of advanced analytical and critical thinking, my written and verbal communication skills are well above average, and I can remember facts and place them in historical context. I can even do simple math fairly well.

I skated through high school doing the minimum required to maintain a grade-point average in the high 3s. My ACT score all those many years ago was 28; I hit something in the high 1100s on the SAT. Not off the charts, but enough to put me in the top 10 percent of college applicants back in 1986, and well out of proportion to the amount of effort I put into school.

Long before I started college, I lost interest in learning anything that wasn't directly related to print journalism. I quit college when I was 20 because I was offered a job in my field. It seemed pointless to waste time in school when I could be getting paid for the thing for which I was attending school in the first place. I figured, "Well, I can go back anytime."

Not long after that, I got married, and not long after that, I lucked into a series of better jobs. I moved around the country, we had a few kids, and the idea of finishing my education dropped completely off the radar screen. After all, I was doing what I had wanted to do since I was 12 years old, and making a pretty good living at it.

The lack of a degree didn't seem to be holding back my career the way I always feared it would. Journalism's funny like that; it's a profession that talks a lot about the importance of having an education but actually puts more of a premium on having real-world skills. I'll put your parchment from Columbia University against my ability to assemble a page in an attractive fashion, put the stories on the page in the proper order based on their relative importance, find a mistake that saves us from embarrassment and send the page to the press -- all in a time span of less than an hour.

Best I can tell, few other professional fields actually rate experience and skill above education.

I found myself four years ago working for the eighth-largest newspaper in the country, despite my lack of formal education. I excelled there, but it was there -- working what I thought was my dream job -- when I started to realize that I was getting bored with journalism in general. I wasn't quite ready to face up to this fact, however; I decided I was just getting fat and happy working a job where I didn't have to leave blood on the floor every night or work a ton of extra hours, and that to restore my love for journalism, I needed to restore some of the urgency. I'm funny like that.

So I put my career in reverse and came back to the Edge, in a position of responsibility, trying to rekindle the spark that fired my love for journalism. It isn't happening so far. I've been through a bunch of big stories that really should have gotten the adrenaline pumping. It's happened, but not in the consistent, predictable way it used to. I find myself facing sudden news events with dread rather than with energy and excitement.

I've been working in newspapers for almost 18 years. I have 30 more years I have to cover before I can call it quits with any degree of financial security. I'm not sure I want to do what I'm doing for 30 more years.

I don't, however, have a clear focus on what exactly I would do. However, it's probably in one of those fields that values formal education over experience. I'd like to think 18 years of busting my ass would mean something, but I doubt it does.

---------------------------------------------------

I have many reasons to not consider going back to school:

I have a wife and three kids. In order for me to become formally educated, I'll basically have to remove myself from my family for a period of several years, except for brief periods between semesters. The Wife says that's OK; she's behind this idea, despite that sacrifice. I'm not sure I'm ready to do that.

I have enough debt; I'm only going to invest as much as I can afford in this. I didn't take out loans when I was 20; I'm not going to do so now. Nor do I want to plunder my children's college fund so I can go myself.

I don't plan on giving up my moderately high-pressure job, at least not immediately. I still need to get paid, and taking even a voluntary demotion would probably not be good for my fragile psyche. I will have to develop some much better time-management skills and self-discipline if I prove serious about this.

I'm 35 years old. Realistically, I'm looking at being 40 before I actually finish, given the constraints listed above. At that point, I'm going to be a 40-year-old white male who's no more attractive to potential employers.

It's very possible that I will find I'm no better suited to a classroom now than it was when I was 20. I would be very disappointed in myself if that was the case.

I have only one really good reason to do it:

To prove to myself that I can.

I don't know if that's the right reason. I'm figuring if I tell enough people, though, I'll be less likely to wuss out and not even try; it'll be that many more people who can call bullshit on me if I wuss out.

I'm looking for guidance here, folks. I'm a few days away from making up my mind. Give me a push or save me from myself.

Happy anniversary to us
It was on this date 13 years ago that I told The Wife that I would be hers forever, no matter what happened, good, bad or otherwise. I told her I'd do all of that for the rest of my life. She said, "You'd better, because that's my plan, too."

As of this moment, I've had roughly 410,227,200 chances to regret it for a second. I haven't.

Epiphany
It's quite possible I have Figured it Out.

More later.