morrowlife

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 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.

Here’s the view we had from our balcony in Pennsylvania one night last July.  That lovely orange glow is the beginnings of an apartment building burning down.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in July 2012, and part of my famous Architecture and Event series.

Or maybe that should be my famous Destroyed Architecture series.  But since I have no such series, this will have to do.

Wonders of WordPress again today.  I keep forgetting to post on Mondays.  I guess it’s just hard to get out of Weekend mode.

LRN12 and her other grandma weren’t able to make it today.  We’re expecting them Tuesday morning instead.  Did I mention they were coming?  Maybe not.  Well, they are.  Monday was the designated date, as Other Grandma was scheduled to be here in Los Angeles to help a good friend clean out her apartment prior to entering hospice care (I assume) and dying.  Very sad.  Even sadder – the friend died on Saturday, so Other Grandma’s plans were all changed.  We were more than happy to accommodate the change in schedule, of course.  Cancer.  Very sad.

Anyway, we’re really excited for their visit Tuesday morning.  We saw LRN12 a few months ago when LRN4 was still in the hospital, of course, but this visit will be under happier circumstances.

And speaking of LRN4, let’s examine her condition, shall we?  She’s doing very well, thank you.  Her condition is noticeably better than it was on Friday.  I know I keep saying that, but it’s true.  Even she noticed it a day or two ago.  Her body is really regenerating itself – her limbs are gradually but very obviously gaining back their musculature.  I’m crediting excellent caregiving, of course. Eyelashes are short but there and eyebrows have started growing too.  The hair on top of her head is still holding back a bit, but we think we see signs of growth.  She’s starting to look . . . normal!  More time and improvement are needed, of course, but she’s well down that path.

The iOS program is coming along.  I feel like I really made a breakthrough in both progress and understanding over the weekend, and there aren’t that many hard parts left to do.  It’s actually starting to look like a working program now!  I’m feeling very good about the possibility of getting it released within a couple weeks.  Which will be only a couple weeks behind schedule!  I really want to get it done and on the market and be able to turn my full attention to the medical program.  Although I also have a bunch of updates I need to do to my Morse Trainer app.  But that can be done as a very part-time job.

One work problem I’ve had in the past is that I continually let too much time pass between writing iOS programs, so my Mad Programming Skillz fade away and I have to relearn everything every time I sit down to program.  Now that I’ve retired from LockMart, the idea was to just keep cranking out the iOS hits.  However, the medical thing was too good of an opportunity to turn down, although I don’t think it’s a permanent full-time job either.  So my efforts will necessarily be diluted, leaving me a choice.  That leaves me with a choice – either become an incompetent part-time iOS/Objective C and part-time Windows/C# programmer or a skilled one.  I’m shooting for the latter, of course.  My Loyal Customers will have to be the judges on that one.

And that’ll be it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this rare food law-enforcement violence news: chili robbery defense!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the button they gave LRN4 during this year’s annual Bone Marrow Transplant Reunion, held on May 10th.  She wasn’t technically in attendance, but I ran over there and had a bite to eat and looked around a bit.  They had t-shirts and buttons for all the survivors there, so I asked them for a shirt and a button for LRN4.  They obliged and marked her number of years as a survivor.  She liked it and it gave me a ton of hope and cheer to think we were on our way to her twenty-year button.  Slightly out-of-kilter Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in LRN4’s former hospital room at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Event series.

Very short shrift tonight.  I’m using the Wonders of WordPress to backdate this to Wednesday because it’s actually just a little after 1:00 AM on Thursday morning.  I sat down to write this about an hour ago, but the internet was dead (as usual), so I decided to pass the few minutes of waiting time by working on my iOS program.  Really got going and made a breakthrough!  The thing I’ve been working on for about the past four days is done.  Now on to the next huge obstacle, for which I need to come up with not only the code to make it work, but also the theoretical model for it.  It’s going to get interesting tomorrow.

LRN4 has been working on learning Adobe Illustrator and producing a logo for the app.  She has a design degree, after all, so I’ve hired her as the official Business Casual Software chief designer.  For no money, of course.  But she does get to keep half of all the sales.  I’m not sure whether she would be better off just getting paid by the hour, but I haven’t made that an option.

I’ve contracted with LRN2 to produce some XML files for the app, or more likely a single gigantic XML file.  I need to transform data from either an existing PDF file or an HTML file out there on the internets.  That kind of work is right up LRN2’s alley and he’s available right now, so he said he’d do it.  For money, of course.  This is a business expense.

Speaking of LRN2, he had a temp job yesterday that involved manual labor, and plenty of it.  He doesn’t seem to have enjoyed it at all.  Finish college, LRN2!  Really.  But in the meantime, congratulations for getting back into the wage-earning life.  I know you can and will succeed.

Oh, LRN4 had a good day, for all of you LRN4-tracking Loyal Readers.  We went over to the clinic this afternoon for her CT scan, which took only a couple of minutes.  That was pretty much our only excitement for the day.  We need to go out for the mail and one prescription tomorrow in addition to her clinic visit, so it should be a much zestier day.  Although today was also great, at least work-wise.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: flying squid!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN1 preparing for a college game of Capture the Flag or something.  He took it very seriously indeed.  I don’t think he lost.  Note the attire of his competitors there in the background.  They weren’t taking it nearly seriously enough.  Great Art courtesy of an unnamed friend of LRN1, taken in June of 2012, and part of my famous Event series.

By the way, I can just barely see LRN1 in that picture.  How about you?

Okay day today.  We spent most of it at the clinic.  In the morning, they took LRN4’s blood and gave her her daily dose of Micafungin.  By the time that was done, they had the blood test results back and decided she needed some platelets to prepare for the afternoon’s treatment.  They gave her the cells and took more blood to find out if her level was high enough.  It wasn’t quite there, so they ordered some more platelets.  We waited, they came, they infused them, they took more blood, and they wanted us to wait another half hour for the results.  Sadly, we were about 50 minutes away from our afternoon appointment, so we told them we needed to grab some lunch and promised to come back for the results.

Oh, in the meantime, the blood test results also told them LRN4’s white cells were below the safe level, so they gave her some neupogen.  That’s the same stuff they gave her sister to prepare for the transplant.  Not a problem – the doctor predicted she’d need it and says it’s completely normal for the white cell count to go way up post-transplant and then drop again.  Neupogen is the way they treat that condition.

We got our quick lunch and headed back to the clinic.  They still didn’t have the blood results, but they told us to go down to Radiology and promised the results would follow us shortly.  They did.  We were in Radiology for LRN4’s second spinal tap and chemo treatment.  It went very quickly and appears to have gone very well.  She spent about three hours flat on her back preventing a nasty post-spinal-tap headache.  Then we went home.

Not a difficult day, but a long one.

LRN4 was pretty drowsy when it was all over because they gave her something to prevent anxiety during the spinal tap.  She didn’t need help with anxiety, being a cool, calm, collected patient, but they gave it to her anyway.  Afterward, they told us she didn’t have to have taken it, so I suspect she’ll refuse it next time.

Anyway, she was drowsy, so I made dinner.  Scary, huh?  We had Polish sausage, potatoes, and carrots with a little cottage cheese and applesauce salad on the side.  Delicious.  And not difficult at all.  Thanks for choosing an incredibly easy one today, LRN4!

LRN8 called and left me a message yesterday.  Hoped to call her back this morning after clinic, but that plan evaporated.  Would have called her back this afternoon, but ditto that plan.  There was zero phone reception where we were.  So I’ll try tomorrow.  Sorry, LRN8!  Can’t wait to chat.

Got a tiny bit of work done today, but nothing really significant because of the aforementioned clinic visits.  Tomorrow, hopefully.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: cheese smuggling!

See you tomorrow.