A Programmer's Analysis

Spring Storage-Racking

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:49:00 +0000

Since moving into our house in June 2008, we hadn't had much of an opportunity to organize anything in the garage. Sure, we had a few stacks of boxes, mostly baby clothes, but for the most part there was a lot of stuff strewn around the three sides that we don't drive through in order to enter the garage. Parking often involved attempting (usually successfully) to gauge the distance to the nearest object with no permanent place, such as the lawnmower or a stroller, so as to leave some walking room in between. There were a few miscellaneous boxes left from our move that just weren't convenient to access. Locating and fetching the stroller we needed for the particular task on which we were embarking (we have 5 strollers, all meant for different uses) was a dreaded chore.

All that began to change one fateful day (last weekend) at Costco, shortly after Becky had headed back to the car to feed fussy little Ethan, Eric and I took a detour through the non-food aisles on our way to check out. And what do you suppose I saw? Well, I'll tell you. (I was going to make you type and submit a guess, but I figured that might not work so well through RSS.) A storage rack!

There were two of them, actually. One could be used for industrial purposes and the other was shorter and not quite as sturdy, but looked like it would probably work for what we needed. They were both the same height, so I compared widths and prices and determined that if I were to buy two of the non-industrial-type units I would have more storage space than one industrial-type unit and still pay less. I also compared the weight it's supposed to be able to hold. Both held at least 1,000 pounds per shelf, which was plenty adequate. Not being an impulsive buyer and not having an empty trunk (or whatever you call the back of an SUV), I wrote the information down and we headed back home to think it over.

I bought one unit (just so I could put it to the test before buying any more). I put it together on Saturday afternoon this weekend, with Eric strapped into a high chair and watching from a slight distance. It was a pretty simple design; no fasteners were required. I got it assembled and then filled it up with some boxes. I even took advantage of the adjustable shelf height by clearing a large space for taller boxes on the bottom while leaving just enough room to fit the 2 leaves of the dining room table that we won't use unless and until we have a huge family gathering. I even tried putting the recycling bins on the middle shelf. They fit, but the storage rack was on the wrong side of the garage for that, seeing how we'd have to walk all the way around the car every time we had something to store for future recycling.

We decided that the product delivered the storage solution that we had expected, and that we would need a total of three of them to store all the stuff we had laying around. I slipped into Costco just before closing time on Saturday and returned with two more. Having gone through the assembly process already, constructing a couple more was easy. I did find one defect in one of the angle brackets in the second unit that would have prevented me from assembling the whole unit had the assembly been permanent, but since disasembly just required banging on the bottom of a few beams with a rubber mallet, I was able to render the defect in the bracket irrelevant by switching it out with another bracket that i had already installed. This placed the defective shelf hole in a place where it would be absurd to actually put a shelf.

After both other units were built, Becky and I loaded them with location-appropriate items, cleared out all the extra cardboard we didn't need that had been hiding within the ranks of the unstackable items, and stood back and took a look. I sure wish I had a "before" picture to show y'all (at the time--"before," that is--there had been no motivation to snap a picture, as it just wasn't picturesque). You'll have to settle for seeing the "after" shots.

Another Gary Varvel Pro-Life Political Cartoon

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:31:00 +0000

Powerful Political Cartoon

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 08:36:00 +0000

Gut-Trenching Work

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:09:00 +0000

My back and side yards are full of trenches. They're supposed to be two feet deep and wide enough to contain the piping necessary to feed 18 sprinklers in 4 different zones, meaning that they start out with four pipes and then at some point the pipes split away from each other so that the sprinklers in each region are fed by a region-specific single line.

I started digging them several weeks ago with the intention of finishing them in a couple of weekends with a couple of friends and then laying down sod on top of them. However, the evening before the Saturday that we were supposed to start I came down with a horribly dreadful disease--yes, you guessed it--the 24-hour strap-yourself-down-to-the-toilet-with-a-bucket-in-your-lap virus. Fortunately, I was feeling better sometime the next morning, though I still had some sort of mild headache

Anyway, I ended up renting the trencher on Sunday and attempting to dig myself some trenches. Well, they don't make those things very maneuverable. It got jammed in the sand as soon as I started using it, at which point I figured out that you aren't supposed to try to go forward with while it's digging. I managed to dig it out, but then the wheels were spinning freely without moving, and I couldn't budge it. I don't own any loose two-by-fours, but after many, many attempts I finally got some cardboard underneath the spinning wheel and enough sand out of the way of the other one to drive it out of the pit it was in. One of my friends then drove over and stopped by long enough to help me turn it around (no easy task; he is much stronger than I am) and I began digging the trench around the edge of my property.

Every half minute or so I had to strain with all my might to sway it back and forth to try to raise the back end which had sunk into the sand again. Along the back of the property, where there's a fence, after which the soil slopes down sharply to a point well below the street level, I wasn't able to keep it going long enough to continue. I finally gave up on that trench and began working on the one that runs behind the house, past the patio, plus one that runs and the eastern side of the house. Since that's level ground it went a lot easier, but I didn't dare try to dig side trenches coming out of it or even connect the two main trenches, because I knew I'd never be able to lift that thing out of the resulting pit.

After returning the trencher, I began hand-digging the side trenches and trench connections. Unfortunately, Becky came down with the same or a very similar dreadful disease the next weekend. Thankfully, another couple of friends were willing to watch Eric while I dug that day (a huge favor, as I made lots of progress), and then I got some help digging the next day from the friend that had initially turned the trencher around for me.

Now that it's freezing cold outside and gets dark at 4:15pm or so due to coming out of daylight saving time, I don't make much progress during the weekdays. Two weekends ago, Eric "helped" me dig--I gave him a trowel (one of those tiny shovels for gardening) and he dug some dirt off of the piles I had made and then threw rocks into the trenches. That same weekend, we took advantage of the huge JC Penney sale to try to buy all the clothes we'll need for the next 20 years. and last weekend I took Eric to the park adjacent to the elementary school down the street--he LOVED the slides. I still managed to dig out some of the loose dirt that the trencher left behind, for which I'm using the trowel rather than my trenching shovel, because the trencher blade is about an inch or so narrower than the shovel and I don't want to have to widen the trench just to get the existing dirt out. I ended up laying on my stomach--a.k.a. "gut", hence the title--reaching down into the trench to scoop, and lifting my torso up with my abdominal muscles to empty the dirt into a pile in a location that won't interfere with emptying the loose dirt out of the rest of the trench. It's quite a workout.

As for the sod, I ended up planting some grass seed a week or two before it got real cold instead, since I'm nowhere near ready to lay the pipes down--besides having to empty loose dirt by hand for the majority of the trenches, I still have to dig two more side trenches from scratch. We're trying to remember to water it (the grass seed) every day, but haven't been real consistent. We've already seen a couple of tiny little individual grass blades poking through the surface, but I don't know if they'll stick around because it's quite frosty in the morning. At least we know the seed has germinated and didn't all blow away in the windstorm we had a couple of days after I laid it down.

Abortion Ticker

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:17:00 +0000

Put the abortion ticker on your site.

A Little Brithster! (a.k.a. brother or sister, and yes, I did just make that word up)

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:10:00 +0000

Although usually people that are expecting figure it out sometime between "four" and "six" weeks along--"four" and "six" are in quotes because they count from the first day of your last period, and conception usually begins about two weeks after that, so a woman who is "four weeks" pregnant has generally had a baby inside of her for two weeks, and by that method of counting, you can never say that you're "one week along" because at that point you're not even pregnant yet--we didn't realize it quite that soon because there were several things going on in our lives that were significantly stressful enough to produce the same sort of telltale signs that would prompt the average married woman of childbearing age to head straight for the doctor--or perhaps to the local pharmacy for an EPT.

Well, we became suspicious enough to go ahead and use that EPT that we'd already bought "just in case," and this time around, it was unambiguously positive. Eric has a younger sibling! He doesn't understand quite yet, but we've been bringing it up to him a lot anyway (no, not using the word, "brithster"). We had our first ultrasound appointment last Tuesday, and we saw a beautiful little child moving around inside his or her mom. He or she--this is why I like to know the gender as early as possible like we did for Eric--had his or her knees up and gave Mommy a good, powerful, two-legged kick while we watched. We saw an extremely clear profile of his or her entire body, including the face. Whoever he or she is, he or she sure is a beautiful baby.

Blessed is that reader whom the blog author finds so doing when he finally posts--oh, did I misquote that?

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:46:00 +0000

So, it's been almost a year and a half since I've posted to this blog. I'd pretty much given up on blogging. Partly because my wife, Becky, blogs everything anyway, partly because I've been sooooo busy with work, and partly because I'd taken up a new "hobby" that has been consuming my spare time like an expectant mother consumes a sizable bowl of ice cream (minus 10 points for the cheap shot).

A lot of things have happened in the almost-a-year-and-a-half that I've been AWOL (or UA, as they say in the Navy) from the blogging community. As I've already mentioned, my wife has blogged about them all, but as my brother brought to my attention lately, I have a different way of looking at things and it comes out in my blogs, so I'll treat you all to a Yo Programo-style account of what's been going through my head besides Eric's finger (yes, I plan to post more about that).

I was going to give you a numbered list of everything significant that's happened that you could click on to expand that portion of the post, but I became convinced that this was a bad idea for the following (expandable, numbered list of) reasons:

Nobody's attention span is that long.

If I haven't found the time to post a blog in a year and a half, how likely is it that all my "readers" (if that's what you call someone who keeps checking a stagnant string of posts, month after month, to see if maybe, just maybe, the stalactites and cobwebs have randomly combined to form the words of additional post that is somewhat legible) are going to try to catch up on a year and a half of missing commentary in one sitting? Hm, about as likely as it is that Monica Lewinsky will be the next president, or that or that "Planned Parenthood" will spend the money that the government gives them on encouraging anyone to be a responsible parent. (Okay, I'm done, you [imaginary?] readers can add more comparisons in the comments if you are so inclined.)
I'm tired.

It's past midnight. I've spent a good portion of yesterday evening and this evening thinking I would make a lot of progress, only to get one and most of another "section" (a.k.a. post to follow) written, and it's getting harder and harder to be witty or make sense, and I've still got 4/5ths of a work-week ahead of me.
I'm using my expandable list anyway.

Being reluctant to see all the work I did making the expandable list work on a blog go to waste, I have succeeded in (cleverly, I would like to think) integrating it into this post so I feel a sense of accomplishment even though I've actually abandoned its initially intended purpose.

Alas, instead, I will separate them into separate posts. I plan to post the ones I have already drafted in the next day or so, and then the rest can follow over the next week or so, but we'll see how that goes.

En Cuanto al Dinero

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:17:00 +0000

Whew!!!!!!! It feels good to have the budget up-to-date.

Some background: I wrote a budget computer program about nine years ago that I've made new versions of periodically. The latest version of the one I use is about four years old. I successfully used the versions I wrote while I was in the Navy to keep track of what I was spending money on and use that to fine-tune the monthly allotments to each category (I have about 25 of them). Back then, I stuck to it with a firm discipline and saved up enough money to buy that Trans-Am that I ended up wrecking last year.

The whole idea of the budget program is that you figure out how much of what you make each month you can allot to each category, and then you spend less than or the same as that amount of money on that category, and your balance carries over to the next month. Since Becky and I have been married, though, the only purpose the budget has really served is tracking our expenses. That was mostly due to the fact that for a lot of that time, we really weren't making enough to meet our essential needs, so watching a bunch of negative balances grow more negative didn't tell us much about what we could spend on each category. It was also due to the fact that I had found a bug in the program (which I fixed before making the project-based version) that was messing up some of the balances, and I hadn't had the time since then to recalculate what the balances really should be.

Well, this weekend I finally found that time, and I ran some reports from the back-end database to compare monthly income to monthly spending. I figured out that we're still spending hundreds more per month than we make, and that even by cutting out all non-essentials, we're still spending significantly more than we make. So, Becky and I discussed what we could do about that. We've identified some individual expenses within a few essential categories that we're going to try cutting out of our spending over the next couple months to see if that's really feasible and how big of an impact that makes. Maybe we'll find some more things that we really can cut out if that works. The other thing is, we really need to move--but either to a bigger apartment where we pay hundreds less than we pay now for more space than we have now or into a house that, from what we've seen, would really have to be out-of-state for us to be able to afford it (since living in a gang or drug infested area is on our not-going-to-do-that list). Perhaps first an apartment in a lower area relatively close to family and then a house later, but it doesn't look like we'll be able to just cut our costs significantly enough to pay a few hundred dollars more in mortgage than we're now paying in rent and still expect to make ends meet. That's a bit of a disappointment to us, but better that we see reality for what it is than get into something now that ends up destroying us financially a few months or a couple years down the road.

UPDATE Blog SET Topic = ( SELECT * FROM AspectsOfLife WHERE HowLongHasItBeen = Eternity( ) - 1 )

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:09:00 +0000

Well, to update you all on the whole supporting the fight against abortion thing, I did find a very supportable network of pregnancy resource centers known as Heartbeat International. Know what else? About a week after I started supporting them, they, along with one or two other such networks, are now the cover story of the latest issue of Time magazine. I'm not sure at this point what else I can do other than financially support them. I looked up the closest center in the area, but I haven't contacted them. I think I will, but I'm not sure that I have any skills that are in high demand there. Plus, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be in this area. Hopefully not long, but you never know.

Finding an organization that fit what I was looking to support was an encouragement, but alas, I heard some very disappointing news today. I don't want to share all of the details, but it has to do with a friend of mine from the Navy (he's been out for a few months) who was betrayed by his wife. What she did to him and what she's doing to him now is heartbreaking, and her getting virtually rewarded for it by the court system makes me sick. I was confident that the Lord was going to set things right in court, but it was not to be. It makes me feel like I somehow failed; like I wasn't praying often enough or earnestly enough for him. I also feel helpless, because there's nothing else I could've done to stop that from happening, as I have not seen him in person since before their little girl was born.

On a completeley different note, Eric is going to bed earlier, even though I haven't come close to mastering the art of getting off work at a decent time.

Oh, and for those of you wondering what we're doing about his formula, some background info first: from day one at the hospital, Eric wasn't keeping down milk-based formula, which he was getting due to a nursing complication which is still keeping his daily supply of mommy's milk down to a small percentage of his daily diet. The hospital gave us lots of free samples of soy formula, which we continued to use as a (major) supplement. Any time Becky had any dairy products, though, Eric would get a rash all over his face, which would go away after a few days when she took care to rid her diet of all of them. After getting an article from my mom via email a few weeks ago regarding the possible dangers of soy, we bought some milk-based formulas that were supposed to be easier to digest and reduce colic based on milk allergies, and we set up an appointment with Eric's pediatrician. The article, after all, was written by a journalist, not a doctor, so we wanted to see what he thought and we wanted to ask him what the alternatives were in case the more digestible milk-based stuff didn't work out.

By the time the appointment came, it was apparent that Eric was getting his rash back from the milk-based formula. He was also spitting up more and was fussier at night. The doctor skimmed the article, said he hadn't heard of any such concerns about soy, and told us that he fed his kids soy formula and they're all fine. He also gave us a whole box of free samples of a soy-free formula that is used for babies with lots of allergies. He says it doesn't have any dairy in it, though the label says that the powder is 17.5% "hydrolysate (derived from milk)." It's the nastiest formula I've ever smelled (and the soy stuff is quite nasty, though it really doesn't compare), but we were eager to find out how Eric would react to it, so we started him on it. We could tell from his first feeding that it wasn't going to work. He absolutely refused to drink it (what a smart little boy; I'm so proud), but when we held his head still and were just as stubborn back to him as he was being to us, he did give in and drink it--and then his throat turned into Old Faithful (I probably needed a shower anyway). We switched back to one of the other formulas and tried to sneak that one in at least once a day, but that little boy knows what he doesn't want. So, we tried the same thing from a different brand. It wasn't as bad, and we thought it was going to work at first, but he still wasn't eating full meals of it, and wasn't keeping it down enough for it to work as a meal-after-meal food. So, we're back to soy. We boil the water first like we've been doing ever since the second time we've gone with powder, and he still drinks a little bit from his mommy in the morning, at bedtime, and as part of a feeding or two during the day.

I'm attending the Spanish service at Calvary Chapel more regularly now. Last week, they had a guest speaker, who sounded like a native speaker, which is the exception at this particular church. I was having trouble keeping up with him, so I moved to the very front so that I could concentrate more on what he was saying. I did understand some of it, especially toward the end. I wish I could immerse myself in a Spanish-speaking culture and not come out until I'm fluent, but that's just not a viable option right now, and probably won't be in the forseeable future.

Fighting for Their Lives

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 09:00:00 +0000

This is my first post in about two months. I haven't intentionally boycotted blogging during that time period; I've just been busy and tired lately, with work and taking care of Eric and all of those high priorities. Yes, plenty of people have successfully blogged and done all of those other things, but I believe those people don't prioritize sleep as highly as I do--and I don't even go to bed as early as I want (it's been consistently around 1am lately).

So, besides all that, what've I been up to? One of the main things I've been looking at is how I can be effective in the fight against abortion.

The Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of Congress' ban on partial birth abortion. That's good news to me, because even though it means that the ban has been challenged, it also means that the Supreme Court, the originator of the ban on laws prohibiting abortion in general in their Roe vs. Wade decision, will be considering the ethicality and constitutionality of abortion practices. They will have to decide if there is a line to be drawn, why it is to be drawn, and where to draw it. Since the argument used to nullify all laws prohibiting abortion in general uses a far-reaching rationality based on an "implied right to privacy" in "the due process clause" (which in my understanding only applies to criminal investigations and legal proceedings for people charged with a crime) as its core foundation, and since there is a possibility that there are now possibly five out of nine conservative-leaning judges, I hope and pray that a decision will be made that affirms that the preamble of the Constitution makes it clear that all persons, born or unborn, have a Creator-endowed right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that the judicial system of this country must recognize and enforce, as it already does in double-homicide cases where a person murders an expectant mother along with her unborn child.

There are three groups out there that I've looked at so far. One is called Stand True, the next is called the Thomas More Society, and the other is called the American Life League--more specifically, its absorbed subsidiary, STOPP, which stands for Stop Planned Parenthood.

The Thomas More Society is a legal group whose purpose is to support the pro-life cause in the legal arena. I'm not sure that they're even involved in the fight for the constitutionality of the ban on partial birth abortion, because the only information I've seen so far is regarding a twenty year old case where a bunch of pro-life demonstrators that obstructed the entrance to an abortion clinic were charged with racketeering in an attempt to require that the courts order an injunction on all such activity everywhere in the country. This group is appealing a lost case, trying to argue semantics about whether the case should be overturned because "property" was not "obtained." The opposition is arguing that control of the abortion clinic was obtained by those standing outside and that such control is a form of abstract property. This seems to me to be a side issue, and I'm disappointed that this has been the main focus of an organization with such a purpose for so many years.

Stand True is a small organization whose philosophy is that the best way to fight abortion is to change the point of view (or world view) of individuals in this country one heart at a time by both getting them the message of the Gospel and taking a stand for pro-life views through events such as the March for Life and the annual Students' Day of Silent Solidarity, which is going to have its name changed to include more people next time around. I appreciate their recognition that a society with values such as our society has cannot be pointed in a pro-life direction with those values unchanged, and that Jesus is the only one who can make such a transforming change in so many people. I don't think that the organization has much influence right now (the number of babies they claim to know about whose lives were saved by this year's efforts is lower than twenty), but they are a pursuing a noble course of action and I hope to see their cause gain infulence and their organization grow in size and recognition.

STOPP is, as their name implies, focused on one aspect of the fight against abortion, and that is interfering with and ultimately obliterating the efforts and infulence of Planned Parenthood, an organization who has clinics in every state, many of which do surgical abortions, and others of which distribute propaganda and medications that can be used for chemical abortions. One of the ways in which the American Life League and STOPP fight against Planned Parenthood are by encouraging and supporting Pregnancy Crisis Centers, which offer alternative ways than abortion to dealing with unexpected pregnancies. They help these organizations make their operations efficient, effective, and compliant with all applicable laws, mainly by distributing operating manuals and a newsletter. Another way they wage this war is by making available, through an affiliate, a list of organizations that support Planned Parenthood that are considered boycott targets. As far as I can tell, this boycott is not widely known, though it is known to Planned Parenthood, which has used some tactics to stop the widespread distribution of this list, such as encouraging pro-Planned Parenthood people to overwhelm the affiliated organization with requests for this list to create financial hardships and drain the budget. It worked well enough that the organization is now only offering the list for a cost of around $32.00 for the first copy and a few dollars per copy after that. This is the only reason why I don't already have a copy of the list. I can understand how fradulent, resource-depleting requests for paper copies of the list would inhibit the organization's ability to do its work, but the catch is that there is no free, downloadable copy of this list anywhere. Even though Planned Parenthood's dirty tactic was the main reason for the switch to a payment-required distribution system, I believe that the organization has gone too far and is now relying too heavily on distribution of the list to raise funds for their administration costs and other activities. In my own opinion, an organization with such a cause shouldn't need to rely on list orders for its money, and if it isn't getting enough donations to continue the work, it should evaluate why not and make corrections so that they are, whether that involves spreading knowledge for their cause to the right people with the right resources, getting involved in other activities which are closer to the majority of pro-lifers' hearts, or some other creative, ethical method that I can't pull off the top of my head.

I'd like to hear from you (my readers, if I have any left) about your views on these issues: Do you think that organizations that financially support Planned Parenthood deserve to be boycotted? Do you think that such a boycott, if ineffective due to non-universal cooperation among the pro-life base, should be abandoned until an organization does something more significant that could be targeted by such a boycott? If I were to make the list available to you (for free) in the form of "additional copies" of the paper list, would you want one? If I were to get the information to you (electronically or otherwise), would you participate? Would you encourage others to participate? To give you an idea of what this involves, a few of the organizations that are on the list (per the page that you go to before you pay to get the list) are McDonalds, Time Warner, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson. I for one would need to give up cable TV and cable high speed internet in favor of DSL and staticky antenna TV (because dish TV is expensive and certainly not a part of any internet package), assuming that AT&T (the DSL provider) is not also on the list.

Family Outing

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:41:00 +0000

Note: This blog entry was originally posted on 10/27/06 and is being reposted after turning on comment moderation due to the inconsiderate posting of spam as the third comment. I apologize to those of you who also had your legitimate comments deleted.

Eric took the longest car trip of his life today, and he absolutely loved every minute of it. Car seats are awesome! After I got off of work, our little family plus Grandpa & Grandma on Mommy's side piled into our SUV and headed over to our favorite place to eat, a wonderful Chinese cousine restaurant that Becky and I haven't been to since just before little Eric showed up in Mommy's little (at that time) womb. It was a wonderful dinner, just like we remembered. The Won Ton Soup there is the greatest appetizer I have ever, ever had at any restaurant anywhere. Even the menu had been overhauled in the last nine months and was packed full of pictures of the food and inserted nicely into page protectors with gold-colored borders. We were the only ones there after the first 15 minutes or so, even though the restaurant would be open for another hour and a half, and the usual waiter was even more friendly than he normally is. Eric got to sit in the middle of the semi-circular booth bench, and the waiter pulled the table out a little bit so that his car seat would fit there. Then he took our group picture on two different digital cameras, making sure that there were no glasses or napkins in the way of Eric's little face. He fully answered all of our questions, especially the one about whether they use MSG, seeing how babies aren't supposed to have it and Eric drinks whatever types of molecules Mommy eats. They do put MSG in everything there because their primary customers just love the stuff, but he said he would have them not use it for all of our meals. He even brought us extra tea bags for the tea when I asked him what flavor the tea was--it was green tea--since it tasted like warm water to me every time I've tried it. I tipped him just over 20%, but I wish I had tipped him a little more for all of his helpfulness and for making our first family restaurant experience so enjoyable. As for Eric, he was sound asleep from the time we left until Daddy put him on the changing table and he decided to wet his completely clean and dry diaper as soon as it was open. He was hungry shortly after that, but he's once again sleeping soundly until some time in the middle of the early morning when he'll wake up and we'll try to stay awake as we wait for him to gobble down some nutritious bottle of soy-based formula (there's not enough milk to satisfy his large appetite quite just yet, but he gets every ounce that there is).

I'll try to put the most recent pictures up on the Kodak Gallery tomorrow. We've got some of Grandpa and Grandma with Eric and some with a couple more of Eric's relatives from Daddy's side.

In other news, our little boy is growing!! He had a follow-up doctor's appointment today, where the doctor informed his mommy that she was doing a great job in caring for him, because his jaundice is gone and he now weighs seven pounds and nine ounces, a good seven ounces more than he weighed at birth, and a full nine ounces more than what he weighed when he left the hospital.

Our Cute Little Boy

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:10:00 +0000

As I'm sure all of you that know me well have heard, my little baby boy was born on the night of October 11th, 2006! That was an exciting day. We had gone to the hospital the evening before because of some bleeding and early contractions, but they had sent us home because labor had not yet begun. Becky was unable to sleep that morning, because she started having contractions around 2:00am. She timed them and noticed that they were getting closer together. I rolled over and went back to sleep, but I got up around 4:30am when they started to really bother her. I worked on the website that would be Eric's home page while she logged the contractions. Before my work day was scheduled to start, I let my boss know that Becky went into labor. He and I had discussed me taking two weeks off when that happened. He texted me back wishing us the best.

The remainder of the day was spent helping Becky deal with the discomfort and pain that come with going into labor as we waited until we were ready to go to the hospital. She called her doctor's office at 6am and spoke with the exchange, but the on-call doctor told her to come in when the contractions were three minutes apart for an hour. At the time, they were more like ten to fifteen minutes apart. It took until about 12:30pm before they were that close. By then, she was in real pain and was doing whatever she could to distract herself from it. She found one thing that seemed to help, and kept doing that until it was time to go. We loaded everything into the SUV that we bought from my dad, during which time she had about three contractions. Then we headed to the hospital. Traffic wasn't great, but it wasn't slow either. We got there in about forty minutes. Instead of parking in the main lot and walking in like we'd been doing when she was sent to the hospital the three or four previous times due to on-call doctors not wanting to take any chances, I dropped her off right at the emergency room and then walked back after parking the car.

When I got to the emergency room, Becky was nowhere to be seen. I let the lady at the front desk know that my wife had come in while in labor a few minutes ago, and she asked for her name. She was relieved to hear that someone had actually driven Becky in, because she had watched her have three painful contractions just sitting in the emergency room waiting area, and she was wondering just how Becky had managed to get to the hospital in such a state. Then she took me around to the back where she slid her card so I could go through the door up to the labor and delivery floor. The nurses there directed me to the room where Becky was changing into her hospital gown. Then a nurse came in that was kinda matter-of-fact and insensitive--not the nice, gentle nurse we had gotten to know that had been there almost every time we had come in before. This nurse ended up being the one that was assigned to Becky the whole time. I'm sure she had plenty of experience and knew what she was doing, but the way she communicated made the whole experience more unpleasant for Becky than it had to be. She acted like she didn't believe Becky was really in labor, and gave us the whole speech about how not drinking enough water can make the uterus contract--as if Becky wasn't already five days overdue and always drinking plenty of water.

After signing a pile of papers while having contractions, she finally got some pain medicine and then an epidural shortly afterward. We dozed off for a little while, but after a bit, Eric's heart rate started to drop, and a bunch of people came in and got Becky hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes. Eric got an internal monitor attached to his head, Becky got, among other things, an oxygen mask, an I.V., and a flush of the amniotic fluid when her water broke and it was apparent that there was quite a bit of meconium present. Her labor progressed in waves, but finally reached the point where she was able to push around 10pm. One and a half hours of pushing were followed by the doctor showing up and, after turning his head back to where it needed to be and making a couple of small incisions, finally pulled Eric's little cone head out. Immediately someone suctioned out all of his facial openings, and then out came his whole body! He had his arms up, bent at the elbows, and he was crying with his cute little cry. They laid him on his mommy's chest and I got to cut the cord. I followed him (Eric) over to the warmer and watched as people did all sorts of evaluations and cleaned him up. I then started snapping pictures and even took a few movies. Sorry, I don't have the actual birth on video. I was too involved in coaching Becky and making sure I didn't miss one second of what was going on.

After that whole ordeal was over, it was around 1am and it was time to call everyone whose phone numbers we had with us that we would dare call that early in the morning. Eric's new grandparents, of course, were the first to be called, both sets being first-timers. My dad, for one, was thrilled to get that call in the middle of the night. Then we headed up to the fifth floor with Becky in a wheelchair, and got assigned a recovery room. Eric spent that first night in the nursery, as both of his parents were exhausted, especially his mommy. He didn't seem to get the hang of nursing right off the bat, and what he was getting wasn't enough, so he got the hospital's canned, ready-to-eat formula and we got to see a lactation consultant the next morning. He didn't eat a lot and spit up after every meal, so after getting his stomach pumped and continuing to not hold down his food, he was soon put on soy-based formula. He did better with that, though he still had a little trouble.

We were all concerned that he wasn't needing his diaper changed all day long, and Becky was having some minor recovery complications of her own, so we stayed another night. Eric's close family that was close enough to come visit him and weren't sick did so that the first evening. He spent the next night in the room with his mommy and daddy, though I had a splitting headache which was probably a combination of exhaustion, sinus pressure, and dehydration. By 11am the next morning, Becky and Eric were both considered healthy enough to release, and we had changed a few of his diapers in short succession. We got everything loaded back in the SUV and headed home. A couple more of his relatives and friends visited him there, and thus commenced our first sleep-deprived night at home with a newborn. Not that we minded. We loved hearing his cute little cry and comforting him, but we both needed naps the next day and thankfully we were able to get them while he slept off a large formula meal.

We're still trying to help him become a fully breast-fed baby. We've got an appointment with the lactaction consultant on Monday, and in the mean time, she's got Becky on a strict pumping schedule, which is keeping both of us very busy all day long, that is supplemented with formula so that Eric gets all the nutrition and fluids that he needs, and is designed to train her body to start making lots of milk, hopefully before our appointment. We finally ran out of hospital formula, so I've bought a couple different kinds since then. We've got a bunch of logs that we've been keeping, including one for his feedings, one for his diapers, and one for pumping milk, with a daily summary page for each one. The logs are extremely helpful in making us confident about whether or not he's getting what he needs in nutrients and fluids. So far, it looks like his food intake is improving, and his output looks to be on track too. It helps that we're able to measure everything that goes into him in ounces rather than minutes. We're also trying to be conscious of when he's oversleeping and missing a whole meal that he's supposed to be getting, which he does a lot, though waking him up just to try to get him to eat is extremely hard to do.

As most of you know, I posted the pictures to Eric's personal website, http://www.dfzsoftware.com/eric/pictures.php, which requires a password that has been distributed (please don't mention it in your blog comments; if anyone who knows us personally wants it, I'll be happy to give it to them). I'll probably upload a second train load tomorrow with more current pictures, though I'm working on getting all of the pictures posted to my Kodak Gallery account. I've only used it so far to view my friends, Chuck & Mkensie's, family photos, so I don't know too much about it but I believe you have to have an account to see the pictures and probably get an invitation from the person who posted the pictures, but I'll look into it once I get a bit more spare time.

...So I heard you didn't get that house

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 07:06:00 +0000

Hi, all, and welcome back. Sorry for leaving you hanging in suspense so long.

The realtor that showed me around that city I referred to as Timbuktu (in a previous post) called me back and told me he had a two-bedroom house going up for rent (at a reasonable rate) quite soon. Besides being a real estate agent, he buys and rents out houses in about the price range that we were looking to buy in. Renting a house in a city where the housing is affordable is a probably a good way to go because we can wait for a good one to pop up and then pounce on it like a kitten who just knocked over the fish tank (that one was for you, Becky. Aren't I so clever?).

So I asked him some questions about it and made plans to go up and see it on the weekend. It was reportedly in a good area that doesn't have any alleys. I figured Becky and I could go up and buy the SUV from my dad on the way up, and my parents were happy to have us do that. Then he called me back on Saturday and told me that he did find a lot of cigarette butts, but told me that he was having all the carpet replaced and all the walls painted that day. I told him I'd call him back in about 20 minutes and let him know if we were still interested. Then I discussed it with Becky and my dad, and we came to the conclusion that at this time and with our circumstances it just wasn't worth all that driving to go look at the house. After all, it might still smell like smoke from how much the ceiling soaked it up, and the timing wasn't really a fit because of Eric's pending birth and the 30 days' notice we have to give our current apartment.

One of my uncles is going to try to help out by asking his young crew where the cheap housing is, and he mentioned some cities that I might try an internet search on. Another relative of mine offered to get us some information on a Riverside condo that may be in our price range. We really do need to get a bigger place, because I work in our living room and I'm sure Eric's not going to be content to be holed up in the one bedroom all day with his mommy--not that that my phone conversations would be uninterrupted even if he was. We're thinking maybe a month after he's born we'll be ready to think about moving. Maybe that's realistic, maybe not. Guess we'll see.

How's Becky Doing?
She's kind of uncomfortable. Eric's doing well, though, moving from side to side visibly and kicking Mommy whenever he feels like it. We were still considering going up to my parents' on Saturday, when there was something that didn't seem right with Becky. The doctor on call said to head on into the hospital and get checked out, so we did that. They hooked her up to an external monitor and we both dozed off a little while we were waiting to see what they would find. They determined that she was having some mild contractions. They gave her a shot to make her womb relax, monitored her for a little while longer, and then put her on a moderate form of bed-rest, so we headed back home and modified the plans.

At that point, I hadn't gotten the call from the realtor and was still planning to go up to see the house and get the SUV so we'd have something more roomy to take Eric home in whenever he shows up, so I rented some DVDs for her to watch, made arrangements with both of my sisters to come over in case Becky needed help or needed to be driven somewhere. They were happy to do this, but shortly after one of them was on her way, we made the decision not to go, so we ended up all hanging out here at the apartment and watching a Reese Witherspoon video that one of them had brought over, and that was more preferable to me than the ten or so other chick flicks they had brought with them. I had originally opted for another one that advertised its similarity to "Clueless", which I found revoltingly more like Pride and Prejudice, so I was happy that the girls, who had seen that movie before, were willing to stop in the middle and switch to the other one, which I did enjoy.

Home, Sweet Ghetto

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 05:03:00 +0000

Be warned: This is a really, really long post. You've been warned.

Well, last weekend was an adventure and a half. I had my pre-approval letter to buy a house in my price range all ready to go, so after I finished up work around 7pm or so, I got in my beautiful trans-am, carrying only the backpack full of clothes that Becky packed for me, and headed out to the one city where we can afford the three bedroom houses. I was travelling alone this time because Becky had a parenting class to go to (not general parenting, something specific that I didn't want to blurt out on the blog). I wanted to be there with her, but it was a lot more important that she be there than me (if you get my drift) and house shopping was important to us too, since the plan was to try to get something we could move into before Eric is born.

Let me just say here that I didn't have my glasses with me. I lost them a few weeks back at a graduation party and have been doing without them for a little while--just until I can collect enough birthday money or gift certificates to buy another pair, so if you're one of the people that loves me enough to get me something for my birthday, that's the big list-topper. Anyway, I was driving without my glasses and I thought I saw a huge group of restaurants off to the left. I got off on the next exit, which took me in a direction I wasn't planning on going. I pulled over to the side to check my trusty Thomas Guide and I figured out where I was. I wasn't sure where the restaurants were, so I headed for a nearby mall, which was closed, but I figured there'd be some fast food places nearby still open. I was wrong. I took another look at the map while I was driving and decided that the huge restaurant repository (I know I'm using the word incorrectly, but it's a programming term and I like to use those. Besides, I couldn't think of a better word for huge collection of restaurants.) had to be on this one street. Not having my glasses, I passed it up once. I can't stand those cities that don't light up their hanging street signs. So I turned around and got on this street. Well, then it changed names on me and I was sure I was headed in the wrong direction. I was a little confused because it didn't change it's actual name, just the type of street that it was known as. So I made a U-turn and headed back the other direction. Well, before I knew it, I was driving with my high-beams on through dark, tree-covered windy, narrow streets without being able to see where the intersections were and without having a wide enough place to turn my trans-am around. So, I finally pulled off onto a side-street where I was pretty sure nobody would be speeding around the corner and I looked back at the Thomas Guide and found that I was somewhere near the center of Griffith Park.

I gave up on the idea of getting something to eat and took the first freeway onramp I found. I got back to the main freeway I was taking at the time. I kept glancing over to the left to see if that "restaurant repository" was still there. It wasn't. I started to doubt that I'd ever seen it. Maybe it was a mirage. Maybe I got back on the freeway past that spot. But that couldn't be, because I recognized these exit names, so I must've back-tracked a little on my night time excursion into the heart of Griffith Park. Weird. Well, it finally all became clear when I got to an exit that was too recognizable to deny. Yes, I was heading back toward home because I had turned the wrong way at the main freeway junction. I only back-tracked about 20 miles, but along the way I had passed some construction that was just starting to be set up, so I had to take an alternate route back toward my parents house, where I was intending to spend the night. I did end up eating something at a restaurant somewhere along the way, though it wasn't the restaurant that I'd gotten off at that exit to find. When I got up to the room they had set up for me, I crashed on top of the covers without even taking any of my clothes off. That's how tired I was.

My parents were gracious enough to let me borrow one of their air conditioned cars with an alarm that can be enabled/disabled with a remote. I couldn't believe what a difference it made from the last time that Becky and I had drove there together with the windows down and drinking lots of water to stay as hydrated and very warm rather than unbearably hot. So I made pretty good time and started checking out the apartments as soon as I arrived. I wanted to see as many as I could before they all closed for the weekend, being a Saturday and all. Unfortunately, there was only one that was even open on Saturdays. Then again, this was Becky's chosen favorite and it was indeed a nice place to live. More affordable than the place we're in now, too. With that crossed off the list, I gave my realtor contact a call and he invited me over to the open house that he and his brother were showing. There was only about half an hour left for the open house, so he and I took off while his brother stayed back and held the fort down. That house was a tad outside of my price range, so while I appreciated that it was an extremely nice house, I wasn't considering it as a prospective home.

We drove around and looked at several houses, all with asking prices within my pre-approval limit, and all with trash can alleys behind them. Most of them had nice-sized garages, and one or two obviously needed some work. The first house we saw was priced about twenty thousand dollars lower than the rest of them and looked like it was just perfect for our little family. There was another couple there with their own realtor going in through one door when we arrived, so we waited for them to finish before we went in. It had three bedrooms, but one of them wasn't really a bedroom, it was really just an office. That was okay, because that's exactly what I wanted to use it for anyway. It was huge for its price, it had only been on the market a few days, and the neighborhood looked just like it had when Becky and I had driven through it a few weeks ago--quiet, with mostly neat-looking houses and green lawns. It was a full five or six blocks from the train tracks, and hardly had any graffiti in sight, as long as you didn't look at those plastic garbage cans in the alley--and those stop signs every now and then. Every other house we looked at was grossly inferior to this one and much higher priced. The only house on the list that had a lower asking price was 450 square feet smaller and looked so tiny from outside that we didn't even bother going in to have a look around. At the end of the day--it was early evening--I called my dad and talked to him a little about the house and told him I was thinking about putting in an offer on it. He seemed to be agreeable when he heard the square footage, the price, and my assessment of the neighborhood. I tried to get a hold of Becky but I couldn't, so I left her a message. So I headed over to the realtor's office to write up an offer. Becky called back during the process, so I filled her in and she liked the idea too. I had to tell her the bathroom was built by a crazy person, because the sink was right across from the toilet and you had to squeeze between both to get into the shower, but we figured we could get that moved after we'd lived there a bit. We finished writing up the offer and grabbed a bite to eat after dropping it off at the office of the agent representing the seller.

So I had some free time. It was starting to get dark, so I decided rather than look at the parks or elementary schools in the area right away, I'd try to get a look at the Calvary Chapel that we heard was in the area. I figured I probably wouldn't want to drive all the way back here from my parents' house on Sunday morning just to go to this Calvary Chapel, so I might as well get a glimpse of the facilities now. I called Becky for the address and found how to get there. The size of the campus took me by surprise. That thing was gigantic!! There's even a little skateboarding park at one end. I took as many pictures as my cheap digital camera that has no flash would allow and started the trek back to the freeway when it hit me that Becky and I had done the same thing the last time we were there--we had left around 9pm without sticking around to observe any night life. Having already put in an offer, I felt I had the motivation to make it a late evening, so I made the decision that I'd drive around the neighborhood, find somewhere to park for a few hours, and just watch and see who made noise, how long the trains ran, how loud they were, and if there was anyone in sight with a can of spray paint.

I parked in front of the house and took off on foot for the nearest park, Thomas Guide in hand. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the gates were still open and the restroom lights still on. I couldn't see much, but I took a stroll right through the middle of the extremely dark, wide open park, making my way over to the restrooms where there was some light that I could use to see the map. I decided to take a different way back, so I plotted my course and headed back the other way. Not a bad place to live! I was impressed and excited. I sat in the car for a while and noticed that we had some noisy neighbors across the street. They must've been having some sort of get-together because they were all out on the lawn talking like it was the middle of the day. Not only that, but people were driving in and out of this block with loud rap music blaring--not something that would make Becky eager to walk the streets at night. I made a mental note of that and took off to cruise the neighborhood. I tried to doze off a little, but I noticed that they kept going in and out of the house, bickering with each other out on the lawn. I also noticed that the trains ran later than I would've expected and that I could hear them more loudly than I expected from this block. Well, I waited until the neighbor whose house I was in front of had gone to bed and I drove away to cruise the neighborhood. This time I parked across the other street from the noisy neighbors. It got later and later, and they were still making noise. I figured I should probably go to bed and chalk this up to a once-in-a-while party, but I wanted to know when they would stop, and I was curious to see if anyone was in that alley behind all the houses. So, I took off again, this time driving to the other end of the alley to shine my headlights down it. Woah!! Someone on a bicycle was right there in front of me. I backed out and drove back to the other end in a round-a-bout way to see two bikes having just emerged from there at full speed, looking back over their shoulders at my car. Well, that was discomforting. Was that gang activity? Was I just being paranoid? I parked around the corner at the far end of the block so that I could observe the alley in my rear view mirror, but also to see where all those cars were going that stopped to chat with the noisy neighbors and their party crowd. Well, some lady that lived there turned on her lights and passed my car on foot, looking at it suspiciously, so I waited until she had gone back inside and I turned the corner, so I was a block away from the noisy neighbors but on the other side of the street and facing them. That's when stranger things started happening. The cars that used to be coming down toward the intersection behind me were now turning around and heading the other way. Then something scary happened. An SUV or a van turned on their high beams and just sat there in the middle of the road, pointing them toward my car, like he was trying to block me from seeing something. I could see past him anyway, and there were some pairs of headlights and tail-lights pulling up to that familiar corner. I draped my sweatshirt over my head, both to block out the light and to make it appear that I was trying to sleep, while my heart raced. My car doors were locked and I had my cell phone in hand, praying for protection and ready to dial 911. I won that waiting game. The car crept ever so slowly toward me, then drove past me and turned the corner that I had been seeing cars turn all night. But the cars kept coming, and I got the feeling that surveillance was being done by every car that passed. Cars started coming from behind me rather than going there. I kept the sweatshirt over my head (one eye looking around the edge) until it finally got quiet again, around 4am.

I wanted to find a place to use the restroom and head off to the Calvary Chapel parking lot to sleep for a few hours, but the earliest any fast food restraunt dining area opened was 6am. I parked at a McDonalds and watched as the third train of the early morning made a racket passing through. Well, that dinging noise kept going after the train was long gone, and even though it was fifty to eighty cars long, it hadn't shown any signs of slowing or turning around. At the ten minute mark, I called 411 and asked who I could report this to. She didn't know but said she could give me Amtrak's main number. It was a freight train, not a passenger train, but I took it anyway because I know how clueless call center personnel can be about things they're not trained for. Well, Amtrak doesn't own any track in this state, and that was apparently the line you call to report emergencies at Amtrak, but the guy took down the information anyway in case he could find someone to report it to. Half an hour later, that ringer was still going, the gates were still down, and here comes a bus, waiting for the train to pass. I crossed the street and knocked on the door and told her that the train had come and gone 30 minutes ago. She said she couldn't legally cross the tracks unless someone held up the gate for her, so there I was at 5am, holding up a train gate so a bus could get on with its business.

The ringer stopped when the next train came through at 6am, and I was able to use the McDonalds restroom, have a huge breakfast, grab almost two hours of sleep in the Calvary Chapel parking lot (which seemed like about three seconds), attend the service, and head back to my parents' house, where I took a much-needed shower, packed up my backpack, and got back into my own car. Well, at that first stop sign heading toward the freeway, I got into an accident. My beautiful trans-am isn't drivable anymore. Nobody was hurt, but another car did end up going off the road and hitting a post of some sort. Fortunately, I've got insurance. There were some police trainees on site, so they directed traffic while the real live police officer showed up, handled the exchange of information, and drove me to the nearest big city after my car was loaded onto the tow truck. I rented a car from there and drove home. The funny thing is, the car I rented was the same make, model, and color as the one I had collided with. Before that, though, I talked to the cop that gave me a ride about the neighbors, and he was pretty sure that my suspicions about them being drug dealers was quite rational.

As for the car, it has been deemed unrepairable, so I'm waiting for the insurance company to make me an offer. Unfortunately, you don't see many salvaged-title cars like mine in the auto trader, so I'm not sure what to expect. Fortunately, we still have one drivable car that will fit a car seat if it must. And, fortunately, we don't need to drive all that much, since I work from home and Becky's there too. We're hoping that we can get at least one decent Eric-suitable car with air conditioning, an alarm, and room for a car seat using whatever money we get from my insurance and if we sell Becky's car, that money too. As for the house, I withdrew the offer before anyone took a look at it. We might still house-shop in that town, but if we do, we'll do it closer to that apartment complex I was talking about earlier. We might end up renting a while longer, just so long as we find a place with more space than we've got here that costs significantly less money.

Thanks for sticking around, those of you that did. And don't say I didn't warn you about the length.

E is for . / . _ . / . . / _ . _ .

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 03:19:00 +0000

My wife, Becky, had her first of two baby showers today. She's just over six months along, and Eric* is starting to kick visibly, meaning that I don't even have to put my hand on Becky's tummy to know that he's kicking. But I do anyway because feeling him kick is so exciting. I think he's even starting to learn his name!! Yes, that's right, he spells his first initial in Morse code almost every time I put my hand there. I say "almost every time" because all the other times, he skips straight to "i". Now, for those of you who never had a fascination with codes and ciphers when they were in elementary school, have never joined the military, or are for some other reason unfamiliar with Morse code, the letter "E" (E is for Eric) is one dot ( . ), and the letter, "i" (I is for Eric), is two dots ( .. ).

We met up with her parents, her brother, and her brother's fiance for breakfast. Then we all drove over to her cousin's place where the shower was so we could drop off the women and get to doing our guy thing. For those wondering why we didn't stay for the baby shower: it's because we're men, and real men do not attend baby showers. We do, however, do ice-bag-runs for baby showers, which we accomplished just before leaving the ladies behind and getting on with our guy thing.

There was no specific guy thing planned, though some of us had some ideas. One idea was to go rent a couple of boats and go out on the water somewhere. I don't even remember where. Another was to go to Six Flags. The other was to go back to my place and play games. I love to play games--no, not gin rummy or dominoes, I'm talking about social interaction games that can easily become hillarious, like Balderdash, Loaded Questions, and True Colors. I also enjoy more strategic interaction games like Spy Alley and Risk 2210 AD. Well, we threw the ideas around. The amusement park idea was out because my brother-in-law is a roller coaster fearing scaredy-cat (but more relevently because his very-up-in-age grandpa was along and for his heart's sake needed to do something not physically exciting). Going to a lake and playing games were both activities that didn't sound like fun to a majority of the group, so we ended up deciding on option (d): none of the above. We headed out to the nearby IMAX theater that we were able to verify the location of with a quick phone call placed back to the girls at the shower. Once there, we saw that Superman was the only movie playing on IMAX. This didn't blow my mind, because I'd seen the same thing in the area that my wife and I were house shopping, but seeing a real-live movie was something that Becky's grandpa was uncomfortable with (he prefers "true" things like documentaries, gossip about Niklor, etc.). So, our much-anticipated guys-only event involved all of looking at the movie titles at the theater and grabbing a bite to eat. Oh, and we all used the men's room. No, ladies, we didn't turn that part into a social event. I told you, we're men.

After the big event, we considered moving on to option (b): games. Only, the shower was only three hours long and we wouldn't have time to do much before we had to come back and pick up our ladies. We timed it just right. As soon as we arrived, many of the girls were just leaving. There was some left-over cake, so we tried some. It was minty. I wish I'd've known that before I tried a piece. I didn't finish the piece of cake, but I did finish the cupcake that her cousin offered me later, which had no mintiness. So, after we guys had loaded up her parents' van with all the opened gifts (okay, the ladies helped by compacting most the gifts into the plastic drawer-chest that she got) and everyone except the close family members of Becky's cousin had gone, we watched Becky's cousin feed her baby some baby food, and then I got to practice changing the baby's diaper as part of a diaper-changing lesson I had requested earlier, which Becky's cousin was eager and willing to give. That was the first diaper I had ever changed. It had velcro, so the only hard part was getting a hold of her legs while she was trying to hold them herself (and squirming around as I was assured my baby won't do for the first few months). I enjoyed the experience and was thankful for the opportunity to get some supervised practice in before my wife and I are on our own.

In other news: The house that went off the market the day before we went house shopping a couple weekends ago is back on the market, and if it remains that way for at least a week, it is to be the first house I look at next weekend when I return to the area fully equipped to make an offer. Yee-haw!

* No, I'm not really going to keep calling him Ichabod; that was just a joke. His name is Eric! I'm proud of my little boy and I'm happy to proclaim his name to all.

Timbuktu* or Bust

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 06:14:00 +0000

Yay! We got our letter of pre-approval, which is even better than pre-qualification, from V.A. today. Now when we see a house for sale on the internet in Timbuktu* in our price range that interests us, we can think to ourselves, "next weekend, we can go see that house and put an offer in if we like it." I'm really glad there's a place in Arkansas** that has decent neighborhoods and affordable housing all in one sizzling location. Yes, it's quite hot there. We filled her plastic gallon-jug of water with ice cubes from the ice maker in the Presidential Suites*** and then from purchased bags of ice when we were in that area the past two weekends.

Now it's just a matter of logistics--making arrangements to spend the night somewhere, getting me up there (Becky's not up for coming along on every trip), getting a realtor to show me the house(s), getting back, and not spending too much money in the process. We do still want to be able to pay for escrow, etc. when it comes time for that.

In other news: Becky and I started attending our practice-giving-birth classes last night at the hospital where Baby Ichabod**** is scheduled to be born. There were eleven other pregnant mothers there with their "supporters". We went around and everyone said whether they were having a boy, a girl, or a question mark. Oddly enough, everyone who was having a girl had spontaneously chosen to sit in the middle row. As usual, Becky and I, along with Ichabod****, were in the "A" student row (that's the front for all you slackers [who, in their defense, at least aren't calling their children "Ichabod"]).

* The city name has been changed to protect nobody in particular.
** The state has been changed too--just for fun this time.
*** The name of the hotel motel was changed, but only to maintain the perfect-couple-who-only-stays- in-the-world-class-hotels image that we've been diligently working to build up.
**** No, we didn't cheat you out of points when you typed in "Ichabod" on the Baby Name Game, and you may see Ichabod's real name here in the future, though most of you already know it since we can't stop saying it when we're around you. For now, though, while we consider the security ramifications, Ichabod will have to do.

¡Yo Programo, Entonces Yo Existo!

noreply@blogger.com (¡Yo Programo!) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 07:04:00 +0000


imports theonebody.believer.*;
imports family.*;
imports inclinations.technical.*;
imports hablar.Español;

class What
{

    private String it;
    boolean canItBe;

    public What(String whatIsIt)
    {
        this.it = whatIsIt;
    }

    public boolean getCanItBe()
    {
        return this.canItBe;
    }

    public void setCanItBe(boolean forReal)
    {
        this.canItBe = forReal;
    }

    public String getIt()
    {
        return this.it;
    }

    public void setIt(String newIt)
    {
        this.it = newIt;
    }

    public toString()
    {
        return "Guess what, everybody!  " + this.it;
    } 
}


public class Yo extends Christian 
    implements Husband, Daddy, Brother, Programmer, Student
{
    private Wife becky;
    private Kid[] kids;

    public Yo()
    {
        becky = HotMomma.getInstance();

        kids = new Kid[1];
        kid[0] = new Baby(Family.BOY);
    }

    public void breakTheNews()
    {
        What theLatest = new What("David has a blog!!");
        theLatest.setCanItBe(true);

        System.out.println(theLatest);
    }


    public void brag()
    {
        System.out.println("Oh, and in case you're the last to hear, " +
            "WE'RE HAVING A BABY BOY!!!!!!!!");
    }

    public void preach()
    {
        System.out.println("If you confess with your mouth, \"Jesus is Lord,\" " +
            "and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, " +
            "you will be saved!");
    }

    /*
     * Explanation: This is here because people tend to turn into their
     * own parents (i.e. treat their kids the same way) when they have kids.
     */
    public void turnIntoMyDad()
    {
        // Note:  This was considered a bug in the genetic code and was
        // "summarily" ( <--whatever that means ) removed.
        // jumpTheFenceToShootArrowsOnAHolidayWithAReporterRightThere();

        System.out.print("It's time to seek the Lord.....aaaat ");
        family.DadActions.lookAtWatch();
        System.out.println(Calendar.getInstance().getTime().toString());
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        Yo me = new Yo();

        me.breakTheNews();
        me.preach();
        me.brag();

        // The following code may turn up in a future release (no!!!!!!)
        // me.turnIntoMyDad();
    }
}