morrowlife

Here’s a fairly dreary landscape, yet I find it somehow beautiful. I especially like the ray of sunlight over there on the right. Should have followed it and found the pot of gold. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in early September … umm … somewhere in the desert around here, and part of my famous Las Vegas series.

No posts yesterday. My sister-in-law came over for dinner and a movie last night, so I didn’t take the time. We enjoyed the evening, though. We saw [amazon text=Despicable Me&asin=B0042U94UQ]. It was the first time either Melanie or I had seen it. Very cute! I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t like that at all. Recommended.

LRN4’s white cell count was up a bit yesterday to 0.7. The doctor says it’s probably a result of all the blood she received the day before, so we shouldn’t worry about it. Doesn’t matter. We worry a bit anyway. The stakes are too high. But we’re doing our very best to remain calm. Tough times.

Otherwise, she feels pretty good and is very busy with projects and just general life. Things feel pretty normal right now. Good times.

Nothing else new, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: frozen meat beatdown!

See you on Monday.

Here are two guys out surfing at Big Sur back in March. Of 2008. Great Art courtesy of my long-lost Olympus camera, taken during one of our memorable camping trips at Big Sur, and part of my famous Camping series.

Not a lot of camping going on in this picture, but I assure you that we were camping. By the way, that sea looks awfully calm and those guys look awfully close to the rocks. Doesn’t look like really good surfing to me.

Extreme short shrift tonight. It’s very late and I’ve been working on a new website to support my Common Core app by supporting teachers who want to learn how to implement Common Core standards. You can have a look at the website here. There’s next to no content as of now, but I’m working on it. The hope is that it will grow into a place that will help teachers stay up-to-date on developments in the Common Core world and maybe even provide some tips on working with it in the classroom, without getting involved in the politics that appear to really be raging right now. The other hope is that it will introduce a few people to my app and maybe drive a few sales. Wish me luck!

I also sent out about ten offers of a free copy of the app to education bloggers today. So far, I have one response, so I sent a free copy that person’s way. Let’s hope it gets a positive mention and maybe a few more people find it useful enough to buy.

Buy, teachers, buy!

LRN4 is doing very well today. She spent a lot of the day getting chemo and doing the type and cross-match for tomorrow’s transfusion. Tomorrow promises to be an exceptionally busy day for her. Good luck at the hospital for a few hours, LRN4!

And that’s it for today. Must hit the sack. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: fish-delivering dolphin!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN2 blowing out his twentieth birthday candles. Them there are a lot of candles, LRN2. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken about two months after LRN2’s twentieth birthday (don’t ask), and part of my famous Event, Food, and Las Vegas series.

Okay, you can ask. LRN2 was still in Utah on his birthday this year. He got here about a month after that, but we didn’t get around to having some birthday cake until a few days ago. But it was worth it. Delicious! And lovingly crafted by LRN4.

Pretty nice day today. I went to LRN4’s doctor appointment with her this morning. Her white blood count is down to 0.5 today. Which is great additional progress! Numbers falling as they should. The other good news is that her red cell and platelet counts were still acceptable today. They have both gone down some, as expected, so she’ll need transfusions of both on Wednesday. We got that scheduled today.

Four more days of chemo!

Worked a little bit on learning how to do marketing today. It occurred to me this morning that it’s time to learn to sell my app. I don’t need to write another one until I’ve given this one a chance to sell. Well, I could always write another one too, but I definitely need to give this one a chance. So I actually have a few ideas. I’m doing a bit of reading on the subject, I’m directly contacting some teachers’ blogs and offering copies of the app for review, and I’m seriously considering getting involved in the Common Core blogging community. I think I could doing something like a junior Instapundit – write some original content but mainly post links to other content. The focus of the website wouldn’t be selling my app, although I would offer a download link in a sidebar. Thinking about the idea.

Any other good marketing thoughts, Loyal Readers?

LRN31 and I didn’t get to talk about her ideas for new apps on Sunday evening. She discussed it with LRN4, but I was watching a football game with my brother-in-law and had no idea they were talking about it. LRN4 gave me a briefing on the subject afterwards, though, and I think there are some possibilities there. Thinking about it.

Nothing much else new today. So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: swimming pig!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s one more shot of LRN4 at Bryce Canyon National Park. I believe all applicable superlatives have already been applied, so I won’t try. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Bryce Canyon National Park and part of my famous Vacation series.

It’s November already! Good day today. Nothing particular new. LRN4 went for today’s chemo treatment on her own this morning. I’m a little worried when she goes by herself that she’ll feel abandoned. She says it makes her capable and strong. Since it makes her happy, she has my blessing to go alone. Just don’t feel abandoned, LRN4!

I spent a lot of time today working on my Plex audio and video server. Added a bunch of music to it and fixed the metadata on several video files. LRN4 can now find her exercise videos, which had been difficult. Also, the Looney Tunes cartoons are properly indexed now. Very important. It was an enjoyable day, if not exactly productive. Some days are like that.

LRN2 put together our new dining room chairs this evening. We got them a couple days ago. The movers damaged the upholstery on a couple of our not-yet-one-year-old-at-the-time chairs, so they paid us to replace them. The new ones look fine and match perfectly. We’re keeping the damaged ones (just a bit of scuffed upholstery) until after Thanksgiving so our family will have someplace to sit when the turkey comes out of the oven. Then they’ll be donated, I imagine. Thanks for your excellent work, LRN2. They look great!

Speaking of LRN2, he reports that he’s been made an Admin on the game he’s been playing and doing a bit of coding for. That’s a nice little feather in his cap. The game is called Space Station 13 and it looks entertaining. I believe he’s planning to leverage his programming experience on this game into a computer science education and career. There’s a lot of that going around in our family. Great choice, LRN2! Want to work on an educational game? LRN31 has some more app ideas cooking.

And that’s about it for this week. No medical visits on Saturday or Sunday. Chemo starts back up on Monday. Could be LRN4’s last round before the DLI transplants begin – we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: skateboarding mouse!

See you on Monday.

Here’s the staff at LRN4’s doctor’s office. That’s her doctor there in the front row with the big square thing over his head. The nurse who gave LRN4 her chemo this morning is the one with the pink hair. They’re very good medical people. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken this morning, and part of my famous Las Vegas and Event series.

The doctor took off his beekeeping hat for our visit. The nurse left her hair in place.

Happy Halloween! We had a nice, quiet, peaceful day, followed by an enjoyable evening with the in-laws. Everybody in their cul-de-sac gets together every Halloween and sets up tables with candy for the visiting kids and food for the resident adults (and their guests). It was fun! LRN2 came over with us, of course.

LRN4’s doctor visit went well again today. She doesn’t need any red cells or platelets, which is fantastic. Her white cell count is down slightly to 0.7. Now that the next round of chemo is underway, I expect it will drop again pretty substantially within the next few days. I’m hoping for a number extremely close to 0.0. She’s looking and feeling quite good. Her feet hurt like crazy, which makes it a bit difficult to walk around much, but she’s able to do pretty much everything else she wants to do and she has comparatively a lot of energy. Things are going pretty well right now.

I spent some time working on the Machine Learning class I’m taking remotely at Stanford. It’s free and it’s worth may more than it costs. These are the same people who brought me my cryptography class this past summer and I’m quite impressed with how they do things. Speaking of cryptography, I’m starting the second class in that series sometime in the next few weeks. Busy, busy, busy.

I think there might be some interesting mobile applications of machine learning, so I’m hopeful it will turn out to be a good investment of time. I’m convinced that pretty much all education is worthwhile, of course, and this work-related stuff ought to be doing me some good, even if it’s only to get my creative juices flowing. Or maybe to get my thinking cap on. Or something like that.

Anyway. Speaking of mobile apps, LRN31 told me tonight she has some more ideas for me. I’ll be taking her suggestions extremely seriously. There’s got to be some gold for me in iOS apps. I just need to figure out what part of the money tree to shake.

Time for bed. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: arrest-evading piglets!

See you tomorrow.