morrowlife

Here are Andy, Me, Mark, Shannon, Sandy, and my mom at Ardastra Gardens and Zoo in Nassau, Bahamas. Along with a couple of friends. To be perfectly honest, we didn’t think that was the best zoo in the world, but we had fun that day anyway. Great Art courtesy of my old Minolta camera, taken by a cooperative zoo employee during shore leave from our 2005 Disney cruise, and part of my famous Shannon, Cruise, Bird, and Vacation series.

No post yesterday. I forgot. I still think that’s a good enough excuse, don’t you? Fortunately, nothing happened yesterday.

Today, Mark and I went to see a counselor. I think we both had a good experience. Fortunately for me, he told me he thinks I’m doing pretty much as well as can be expected at this point after Shannon’s passing. I still need to let the grieving run its course – I’m sure it will never end, but I’m also sure I’ll be a bit more able to concentrate after a while. The important part, he said, is to keep living my life as I work through the grief. I can do that. I think I’m doing it already, in fact.

Didn’t do much else today. Yesterday, I forgot to plan any dinner, so I ended up making a frozen skillet dinner and a tossed salad. I was a bit frustrated that I let it go until after 7:00 in the evening before I even remembered that I needed to cook dinner. Tonight, I planned ahead. I made bacon-wrapped scallops for an appetizer, grilled filet mignon and twice-baked potatoes for dinner, and caramel apple tarts for dessert. Many thanks to Chris for the Omaha Steaks Christmas present, which provided everything but the appetizers. We bought the scallops at Trader Joe’s. They were supposed to be for New Year’s Eve, but we never got to them. So Mark and I had half of them tonight. It was a good dinner.

I noticed a puddle yesterday at the front edge of my yard, right by the driveway. It had gotten worse by today, so I called the HOA, thinking it might have been an irrigation problem. They decided it wasn’t, so they suggested I call the local water district, which I did. They came out shortly to have a look and determined I had a leak in my main water supply pipe, somewhere between the water meter and the house. He also told me I was losing about half a gallon a minute. So I called the builder and asked if they could send somebody out right away. They put me in touch with the plumber who worked on building the house. Since it was leaking, they came out right away. The guy spent a few hours working on the line and got it fixed – or so I thought.

However, Mark soon discovered that the water pressure was dramatically reduced, so I called the plumber back. They guy is coming back early tomorrow morning to remove whatever is partially plugging the line. Then it will be fixed. And under warranty!

I spent a bunch of time this evening labeling old family pictures. I found a bunch of photos with Shannon in them, which was nice. I also found a couple of very brief video clips, some of which featured Shannon. I’ll have to do something with them soon. Here’s the earliest example I found: the haircut

Truly a video masterpiece! Such amazing production values.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: bear-pregnancy-detecting beagle!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s our 2011 Hawaii cruise ship about to arrive back in North America. Fortunately, this wasn’t the end of the cruise – we still had one more night to go. We made a brief stop in Ensenada to stay legal with the Jones Act and then spent one more lovely night heading back to Los Angeles. That was a really good cruise. Great Art courtesy of the (then brand-new!) exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in the port of Ensenada, Mexico, and part of my famous Cruise, Machinery, and Vacation series.

That’s a really big flag. Really big.

Missed a couple of posts yet again. Sorry about that.

Pretty good day today. We visited with LRN4’s Las Vegas doctor and got a pretty clean bill of health – she’s at least clean enough to go for three more days without getting blood. Her platelets are down a bit but still just fine, her red cells are great, and her white cells are up a bit. We never know if increasing white cell counts are good or bad things these days, so we’re assuming it’s good.

We were supposed to go see our doctor in California on Thursday of this week, but he called today and let us know he won’t be in the office that day, so we rescheduled to next Monday. We’ll have to see whether we can get in to see our Las Vegas doctor on Thursday instead.

The weekend went well. LRN4’s still feeling quite weak, but she felt that she was improved enough to be able to make it through two hours of church, so we did. Otherwise, it was a relaxing weekend.

Not much news on the work front for me. I’ve started working on the medical app, but progress is slow. Maybe I’ll get something big done tomorrow. In the meantime, I did a little bit of support work on the iOS app. I made a quick “getting started” video, which I posted on the Business Casual website (have a look!). In the middle of making it, I noticed a bug in one of the reports, which I confirmed. Shortly after that, LRN8 reported another bug in that same report. Oops. I’ll get it fixed right away and resubmitted.

I finally got my Apple developer account switched from an individual account to a business one over the weekend. It took quite a while (since July!) because of Apple’s long downtime after their developer website was compromised, but it’s done! My apps now show up under my business name! I think that’ll end up being a good thing, businesswise.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: swimming monkey!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Samuel Cunard, the guy who started the Cunard Line all those years ago.  That ship in the background . . . isn’t our ship.  We were docked behind that one.  Oh, well.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in Halifax, Nova Scotia during last year’s east coast cruise, and part of my famous Statue, Cruise, and Vacation series.

Nice bow tie, too.  Not to mention some pretty awesome sideburns.

Good day today.  We had LRN4’s Thursday doctor visit today.  She’s in pretty good shape, although her blood levels had finally gotten low enough that she needed a shot of neupogen and a unit of hemoglobin.  But that’s okay – the doctor looked it up and it had been three weeks since she was last pumped up.  Not bad at all.

And speaking of three weeks, that’s how far away we are from our departure date!  Assuming everything goes well!  Which we hope it does, of course.  We’re really getting excited to leave.

Let’s see – what are LRN4’s new, exciting symptoms these days?  Well, the numbness in her feet seems to be moving around a bit.  It started out pretty much in her toes.  Then it gradually made its way to her heels and then up past her ankles over a period of several weeks.  Now it seems to have retreated back to her toes a lot of the time, although this evening it was back to her heels.  Her feet have continued to swell up a lot and it appears that the swelling is at least correlated with the moving around of the numbness, if not the cause.  She also reports in the last few days that there’s a strange feeling in her legs that is associated with weakness and possible difficulty balancing.  But it’s kind of vague.  I don’t think the doctor quite knows what to do about that one.  He thought her low red cell count might be at least a contributing factor, which I believe was a strong motivator for today’s transfusion.  LRN4 doesn’t seem to think it did the trick, though.

Conclusion: cancer is weird.

Made some real progress on the iOS app today.  I really need to finish this thing up so I can get back to the medical forensics business, and soon!  We’re swiftly running out of time to work on that one, just as I’m swiftly running out of time to get the iOS app on the market.  Work, self, work!

Anyway, I got a key feature working, mostly.  Just have a couple of bugs to chase down and I think I’m there.  There are still several key features remaining to be added, but things are becoming easier.

There lots of buzz today on the internets about the [amazon asin=B00DR0PDNE&text=Google Chromecast].  I must say I was pretty impressed with what I read as well (although I did just read a much less flattering review here), and Google announced an SDK is or will shortly be available for developers to pile on.  It could turn into a very attractive device for a very attractive price.  In fact, at that price point, I can imagine people buying it just to play around with it.  I can also imagine hardware/software hackers taking a very close look at the device and coming up with some interesting things.  There ought to be some fun to be had there.

How I wish Apple would release an SDK for the [amazon asin=B007I5JT4S&text=Apple TV]!  My more astute Loyal Readers will recall their original plans for the iPhone, which pointedly did not include independent developer access to the device.  What a mistake that was and would have remained if they had left things that way.  I’m pretty positive iPhone sales would have been only a small fraction of what they ended up being, and I even have my doubts that Android would have come along.  So why can’t Apple figure that out and unleash the Apple TV on developers?  I think a large percentage of the apps would have ended up being games, but think of the gaming possibilities!  In fact, Apple seems to have finally figured out they have an opportunity there.  They’ve just begun to allow game developers to push iPhone game screens to the Apple TV, but without allowing those games to run natively on the device.  Big lost opportunity as far as I’m concerned.  Granted, I don’t think it would ever be as big as the iPhone and iPad have been, but I think it could have been much bigger than it is currently.  I think a lot of people would buy what would essentially be a $100 Apple gaming console.  And if game prices were held down to the levels we see on the iPhone, I think it would be a huge hit.

And it’s late, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: chicken wing theft!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the lighthouse in Portland, Maine, as seen from below.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during last year’s east coast cruise, and part of my famous Cruise and Vacation series.

Good weekend.  LRN5 and her family finally arrived!  We had nice visits on Saturday and Sunday, after which they departed on their vacation.  They’ll be back on Friday and they demand a dinner that night.  We’ll work something out.  LRN3 comes in on Saturday and demands a dinner that night too.  Pretty tough Loyal Readers, but I can handle ’em.

On Sunday, our dear friends Art and Cathie made a surprise visit.  We really enjoyed seeing them.

Moved out of the Residence Inn and into the Hampton Inn on Sunday.  It’s way smaller and not nearly as nice, but it’s also way cheaper.  I mentioned in my letter to the family yesterday that it’s helping me prepare for the Village.  I have a feeling that place will be relatively humble.  I’ll be ready.  Actually, I don’t care how humble it is.  I’m ready now.  Get me out of this hospital!

Otherwise, I hung out at the hospital with LRN4.  She’s doing pretty well – just a little better each day.  Still no increase in the white blood cell count.  We expect it within the next couple of days.  Hopes are extremely high.

We had a nice birthday celebration for LRN4 on Friday.  The nurses sang Happy Birthday to her and gave her a piece of cake.  Then they told her it’s not low-bacteria, so she couldn’t eat it.  So it became mine.  Then my cousin Betsy and her husband Bob came over with a carrot cake (that LRN4 could eat!); birthday plates, napkins, and forks; birthday presents (from them, LRN3, and me); a birthday sign; and birthday hats.  We had a really nice time together.

And that’s it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Reader with this shocking food violence news: hot-dog-dumping helicopter!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the lobby at the Coco Palms resort on Kauai.  Well, the former lobby, anyway.  At the former Coco Palms resort.  How I wish I had been able to stay there before it was destroyed.  It was a pretty cool place.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during our cruise to Hawaii, and part of my famous Cruise and Vacation series.

Pleasant enough weekend.  LRN4 was in good health and good spirits and we spent our time relaxing and enjoying being together.  We played a couple games of War on Sunday evening.  LRN4 slaughtered me.  She claims it was just random, but I’m not so sure.

I’ve been struggling to figure out where to focus my money-making efforts.  For now, I’ve decided to spend Monday and Tuesday working on flight simulation stuff, Wednesday and Thursday working on medical software stuff, Friday and Saturday working on iOS software, and Sunday reading.  That schedule will be adjusted as necessary and is subject to being liberally interspersed with hanging around, going places with LRN4 when she’s feeling better, and generally having a fine time.  Now that’s the kind of job I’ve always wanted!

Spent some time on the phone with LRN23, speaking of flight simulation stuff.  He has some definite ideas for some stuff I can work on.  I’ve asked him to jot down a few notes, since his ideas came too fast during our chat for me to take any kind of decent notes.  For now, I’m concentrating on completing and expanding my TIFF tag reader.  Hopefully, somebody will find it useful at some point.

And that’s it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: pineapple assault!

See you tomorrow.