vanderwal.net

Life Lesson

It has been a rough couple of days. I was finishing an e-mail to the other side of the globe and on a voice chat, when I had to say "got to go bye". I had been feeling the gurgling for an hour or so and knew what was coming, but little did I know. Yes, food poisoning (hint, don't rewarm then refrigerate and then rewarm creamed spinach).

At 2am on Tuesday morning my I, my body, and Joy had had enough and it was off to the emergency room. It seems to have been a good choice as I had lost a sever amount of fluids and needed to take two full bags of IV and could have used a third. This was my first trip to the ER since in the past 10 years or longer, well for myself that is. It was the first IV I have had since I was very little.

Yesterday I went through insane headaches from dehydration and slept much of the day. I was also not allowed to touch Will, which was very tough. I did manage to get a gallon of Gatorade down and keep it down, which was a good accomplishment. I thought work would have been in the plans of today, but my body was not up to that game. I was back to eating food this afternoon and should be back to normal tomorrow. I am wading through a flood of e-mails here at home and know I will have even more at work tomorrow.

The whole thing had the balance of life eerily brought before me. One of the medicines that I was given made me insanely thirsty, but I was not aloud to drink and had me feeling like I was in a Paul Bowles story. When I got home I was so sore and weak I felt like a bag of bones and organs wrapped in skin, with little more to me. I did not like this glimpse at mortality, particularly not while looking in on my son.

Now the trick is finding a doctor that will give me a follow-up visit. I have had two doctors leave town in the past couple years and one stopped doing outpatient call (only will see patients in the hospital). This also knocked out any hope at going to SXSW as I work for a company that lumps sick-leave and vacation (nobody want to be out sick so people often come to work sick) so my vacation days are gone for that valuable experience.

Chomper

Will's has his first tooth peek through this morning. He has been teething for about three or four weeks. Last night he was a very fussy sleeper and this morning we know the reason, well I found our as he chomped down on my finger and I got more than gummy resistance. Big day for the the guy.

Birthday Celebration

Today is an icy birthday day here. Just another reason to celebrate.

Will Update

Will had another doctor visit (for his four months) and he was suggested to have 4 Tablespoons of rice cereal two times a day (he has been eating one Tablespoon a day for a little over a week). In two weeks he can start eating 2 Tablespoons of oatmeal. Two weeks after that he can start eating vegetables. Two more weeks and he will start high school, okay, maybe not this last item. Dang it if he is not growing up quickly. He has been teething for a couple weeks and it should be any day or week now that the bottom two teeth pop in.

Tonight I was finally home from work while Will was still up. This is always a great treat for me. He has just a few minutes of being really cranky right before falling a sleep, but it is still wonderful to have that time with him.

What February Means

February 1st means my birthday is only days away (this Friday actually). I have had such luck with the Atkins body hack (down 35 pounds or so) I am proposing to have an Atkins Birthday, that is right I will be one year younger on the 6th.

I have had it with getting older. I just want to spend more time with Will.

Doing this how long

I realized today that I have been marking-up and posting to my own personal Web pages since November 1995. I have been trying to figure out when all this started. The pages started as "The Growing Place", which included the links page along with a handful of other pages on CompuServe's initial hosting of personal pages. I moved from there to Clark Net in late 1996 so I could get CGI access and have my own e-mail (well not really my own). In late 1997 I bought vanderwal.net and finally moved it to a couple hosting homes in 1998 and 1999. Then has been with its current host since 2000, which has provided great service and resources since then (I actually had an other personal site with this host much earlier and ran not so personal site the host for a short while.

Why all of this today? Don't know. It could be that I finally found when Compuserve started hosting member's pages. It does not seem like that long ago until I think that I have been building a presence on the Web for coming on nine years. I have been doing this professionally since 1996. I have been working professionally as a geek since 1988, either as my full-time role or just one of the hats I wore. I have learned a lot about application development and Web development in all these years. It is still about getting the information into the hands of people that are looking for it when they need it.

Hearts and Cheese Cubes

There are two things I have been enjoying putting in salads of late, Parano cheese (a Dutch cheese with a parmesan taste, but a dense smooth gouda texture) and artichoke bottoms. The artichoke bottoms, a.k.a. hearts, are hard to find as they have no leaves. I have found I really prefer the ones from Trader Joe's in a jar to others, which come in a can. If the canned variety is all that is available, try to find them at Whole Foods. I am sorry, but I do not have the brands imprinted in my mind.

Just thought to share, you may go read something else now.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!!

Holiday adventures

These past few days were very good and trying. On the good front, it was a family holiday spent with family and friends. It was also a foodfest. Tuesday was pork chops with sweet onion, apples, and cumin with a side of cauliflower au gratin; Wednesday was crab quiche and linguini in a herb garlic clam sauce; Christmas was rack of herb rack of lamb (from Trader Joes), popovers, garlic mashed potatoes, haricot vert, asparagus with toasted sesame seeds, salad with Parano cheese, tomato, and artichoke hearts, with dark chocolate truffles for desert.

The foodfest more or less ended there as I was weary of cooking (a first for me) and coming down with a cold. My mom, however needed more attention as some ailment caught her and gave her 36 hours in the hospital. She was released this morning and is doing much better now that her fluids and minerals and salts are largely back to normal, thankfully.

The gift giving went well all around I believe. It was good to have my parents here for Will's first Christmas. Right now I really need a rest.

Merry Christmas - vanderwal.net

Merry Christmas!!! We feel very lucky as we got the greatest present three months ago. Will has been the best present we could have ever dreamed up.

Have a great holiday with you and yours and share in the warmth of friends and family.

First snow

We got our first snow of the season last night and it was Will's first snow.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving

There is a lot to give thanks for this year, the biggest gift to give thanks for is Will. Will has caused a wonderful change to take place in my life and for that I am deeply grateful. Everybody said the birth of a child would cause great changes in your life, but I did not expect it to be as wonderful or such a change of perspective.

Getting clean

I keep referring back to Jish' metrosexual cleansing journal posting. There are good tips in there. Now that I am getting my old shape back (down 25 pounds in the last two month) I am wanting to take care of myself again.

Udell presents the Personal Service-Oriented Architecture

Jon Udell discusses Your Personal Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which lays out the elements of the futuristic Apple Knowledge Navigator are actually available today, but with out the voice interaction. Jon points out that we already use search much like the navigator, but we are missing the ability to keep track of what we found valuable or not valuable from those searches that are related to similar searches the use ran in the past.

I really like this idea one's own Web browser will show you links you have followed before (within a limited amount of time), but these visited links and the metadata we add to this information does not easily transcend machines. I work on three or four machines through out a normal day as well as a few mobile devices. Each machine has bits and pieces of information strewn across them, but with only a little bit of it synched. This I would love to have worked out in the not so distant future. It takes some effort to get the information synching between the machines and devices (part of the Personal Info Cloud).

There are many gems in Jon's short article, including sharing information and searches with friends or "buddies".

Please send sleep

I am back to being very tired again. My mom was in town for 10 days to help with Will (who is doing fantastic) and was a fantastic help in letting Joy and I the opportunity to get a little sleep and to have just a little down time. It was an incredible gift. Since she left on Wednesday I have been back to 4 or 5 hours sleep.

I finally started getting back to e-mail and getting some work on outside projects rekindled, which is finally moving along again. I have chunks of time to get work done, which is balanced with insanely strong desire to sleep. I had one outside responsibility ease off this past week, which will help the other volunteer tasks I have on my plate.

If you sent an e-mail recently, I am getting to it.