Seeking to Understand

It was 2:00am. By all rights I should have been asleep. In fact, moments before, I was asleep - very soundly, I might add - until my wife, trembling in fear, woke me up. “There’s a bug the size of a bird in the bathroom!” she squeaked. Groggy, I muttered something about how they don’t make bugs that big in Iowa, but nevertheless, I was curious to see if she had had a waking dream, if I was dreaming, or, perhaps, the end of the world was upon us.

Stumbling to my feet, I went with her to investigate. Everything was dark, the light was off, and we stood outside the door for a second. She didn’t really want to go in there again, and I still wasn’t sure I was actually awake. Eventually, she pushed the door open and peeked around to the window. “There it is!”

I turned the light on and peeked in myself. My heart stopped for a second. Clinging to the curtain was the largest bug I had ever… wait a second… it wasn’t a bug - it was a bat!

The species identification allowed my mind to stop reeling and the bat and I took a moment to size each other up. It hung on the curtain, clearly annoyed that the light had been turned on. I immediately began to think about some way to get rid of it. Then it started to move its head slowly left… then right… and then it took flight! In a panic, Melody and I jumped out of the room and slammed the door behind us. (There’s a great many wonderful diseases carried by bats - including rabies. Neither of us - especially my pregnant wife - were much eager to catch any of them at the time.)

With the door closed and the bat fluttering around behind it, we let the shock roll over us a second, and then got down to the business of plotting it’s removal.

What could we do at 2:00am? We couldn’t call a bat-removal company. If we left it in there until morning, then we wouldn’t be able to take showers before work. We also wondered how it got in there in the first place. Since we hadn’t time to examine the window, one theory was there must be a tear in the screen. (The window itself had been open at the time.) We were also worried that the bat would fly into the hole in the wall that the plumber left there awhile back when he repaired a broken pipe. (We hadn’t patched it yet largely because we want to redo the entire bathroom anyway, and it seemed like a waste of time and money to patch it only to tear it all out again later.)

As we sat on the floor of the hallway forcing our minds to wake up and think, we decided that perhaps we could catch it in a bath towel. Of course bats are well known for having remarkable object-avoidance abilities, so while the idea didn’t feel like the greatest to either one of us, at the time, it was the only one we had.

Towel in hand, I gingerly opened the door. The light was still on, and the bat was still flying. It dived toward me - and I slammed the door shut. The last thing I wanted was for the bat to get into the rest of the house! Then it’d be almost impossible to catch. This process repeated several times before I managed to get the door open enough to shut off the light without being attacked. Then we waited.

The sounds of fluttering died down, so we carefully opened the door. I went in with my towel at ready. The bat was now hanging on the mirror. It sensed something sinister was afoot and before I was within range, it jumped into the air again! Slam - the door closed behind me and I was in the hallway before I even realized what happened. (Instincts are neat.)

I tried again, this time the bat was back on the window. I acted fast and whipped the towel at him. I managed to hit him and he fell off the window, but the towel didn’t fall over him like I had hoped. He was back in the air and nanoseconds later, I was safely outside.

We needed a new plan. As we sat there examining our surroundings, we saw some leftover boxes from some of our recent baby room improvement materials. The towel hadn’t worked, but I did manage to hit it. So perhaps this bat’s sonar wasn’t up to the usual high standards we’d heard about - or worse, perhaps it was sick with something. The box seemed like a good thing to try. Plus, if we did manage to trap it, we could cover the box and get the bat outside easily and perhaps without hurting it in the process.

After modifications to the box to remove some dangling bits, we turned to the bathroom once again. We slowly opened the door and surveyed the area. Not on the mirror. Not on the curtain. Wait.. where’d it go?

Our eyes darted around frantically trying to locate the winged beast. It was nowhere to be seen. That left two options - it flew into the plumbers hole and was therefore now in the walls someplace, or it was behind the shower curtain. Neither of us were especially eager to go poking around for it - but it had to be done.

I held the box in front of me, open end out, ready to strike. Melody moved in and carefully peered around the shower curtain… Squeak went the bat! Shriek went my wife! The bat flew out from around the curtain, I took aim, and threw the box at it.

The box sailed right to the bat and enclosed it. The bat ran into the side of the box with a thud as gravity brought the box down. The bat was trapped! Melody quickly pushed down on the box to hold the bat inside. We now had a bat trapped in an upside down box on our bathroom floor at 2:30am.

After tearing down another box into a single flat piece of cardboard, we carefully slid it between the trap and the floor to create a cover so we could turn the box over without the bat being able to escape. During this entire process, the creature was screaming and squealing in protest of its incarceration.

Once the box was closed up and we stopped moving it around, the bat calmed down. Perhaps he was content to have finally found a nice dark spot to rest. It didn’t last long, though, as I took the bat-in-a-box outside, opened it up, and watched it fly off into the night.

Now that the bat was gone, we had to figure out how it had got in there in the first place. After looking over the window screen carefully, it appeared to not have any tears or openings. That left only one option - it had actually come in through the plumber’s hole! That likely meant that the wall was hollow up into the attic and the bat was probably living up there. (Perhaps there are more up there even now.) We had to do something about the hole immediately or we’d never be able to sleep at night.

In the basement we had some leftover drywall from our kitchen ceiling project. Why it never occurred to us to use that to quick-patch the bathroom hole is a mystery, but it was sure obvious now that there was a pressing need. I measured and cut a piece of drywall that would cover the hole. Not a proper patch, but it’d keep bats out. I screwed it into place. It was ugly, but it got the job done.

After the construction ended and the dogs were calmed down from all the commotion, we settled back into bed and began the process of letting the adrenaline in our bodies diminish. It was 3:00am.

Today we had the ultrasound where it was determined that we are going to have a little boy sometime in December. Pretty cool, eh? Here are the required fuzzy pictures of our gestating child…

Tapulous (of which I am employee #1) has “leaked” a video and rather spiffy desktop background for our upcoming game Tap Tap Revenge which should be showing up in the Apple store for the iPhone and iPod Touch next friday.

TTR was originally created by Nate True for hacked iPhone and iPods and it was a huge hit. We came along and kidnapped him, tied him down, and held his bird hostage until he agreed to work with us on a new and improved version. Luckily for his bird, he came through with something awesome. I think the video speaks for itself, but go have a look and see if it appeals to you.

I’ve been using Twitter more lately. Perhaps because my company is working on a Twitter client (among many other things)… or perhaps because it fills some deep void in my online life… or perhaps because I like pain (especially in light of just how often Twitter is down)…

I think the compelling thing about Twitter is that it can replicate, in a small way, the feeling of camaraderie of being in a room with your friends while not actually being in a room with your friends.

This past week I was in Palo Alto and got to spend some quality time with my coworkers all together in one small office - it was great. And while I’d kind of like to have that experience everyday, I’m also glad I don’t as it makes the occasions when we do all get together something more of an event. Plus, as much as I liked it out there in California, I don’t want to move.

What Twitter allows is a small slice of that in-person group experience where you can toss out jokes, random thoughts, or even bits of important information that may have little to nothing to do with what everyone is personally working on at the time. As a remote employee, that is the single aspect of the office experience that I miss the most while working alone from home. Right now I see Twitter as a potential way to maintain a little bit of that.

Incidentally, that kind of usage for Twitter essentially turns it into a lightweight email list or chat room of a sort. Although in many ways, it serves an entirely different niche than either of those. With it’s message size limit, it is virtually useless as a chat medium or as a way to express long thoughts (such as this entire blog post). However, it is perfect for the stray random thought that you might blurt out loud while hanging out with friends or as a way of sharing some funny video you just watched, etc. And since it’s not a “live” medium such as a chat room, it doesn’t carry with it the expectation that all comments deserve a response, which is pretty neat and perhaps part of it’s charm.

If you use Twitter or want to try it or whatever, you can follow me and I may follow you back. Using the web interface sucks, though, so if you really want to try it out, be sure to check out one of the many Twitter clients for Windows or MacOSX, etc. as it makes the entire thing a lot more useful.