morrowlife

Here’s a big digger. A really big digger. It used to dig for iron. Now it digs for tourists. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the Frontier Homestead State Park, and part of my famous Machinery and Vacation series.

I felt like [amazon text=Mike Mulligan&asin=0395169615] while I was exploring that thing. It’s electric, not steam, but the effect was the same.  Fun.

Pretty good couple of days. LRN4, LRN2, and I went to Los Angeles on Monday. Because LRN4 needed some transfusions in the afternoon, we weren’t able to leave there until after 8:00 PM, so it was a little bit longer than a 16-hour day, but it was a good one anyway. LRN4’s white cell count is down to 1.1, which is good. Everything else is looking pretty good blood-wise too. We’re just hanging out until they can finish the second round of chemo (starts next Monday!) and get us into the DLI transplant. We still don’t know when that’ll happen, but it may start in December.

I walked LRN2 all around the City of Hope campus while LRN4 was getting her transfusion. We saw pretty much everything. We were a bit surprised to learned that they have gotten rid of almost all their koi and turtles in the Japanese garden. On one hand, almost all the fish were black, which is a bit less attractive than most koi, so nobody really misses them. On the other hand, the feeding frenzies are now quite subdued. So there’s good and bad. But it’s still pretty in there.

We saw our old neighbor in the Village, which was nice. Unfortunately, his wife hasn’t been released. On a positive note, they hope to be going home in December. So we may not see them when we get back. I hope so, anyway, for their sake.

Not much work progress. I spent some time on the phone with my associate John last night and got a bit more education on writing tests. I hope to put some of it to use Real Soon Now.

Speaking of travel, LRN4 and I are going with Ken and Melanie to Salt Lake City for the weekend. We leave Friday morning and come home Sunday morning. LRN4 and Melanie (why isn’t she a Loyal Reader yet?) have both been feeling like they want to visit their father, who is now 92-ish. Friday is a holiday here in Nevada, so the in-laws both have the day off. We’re looking forward to the trip and the visit with family. I’m hoping LRN4 can handle all the travel.

My new computer (well, it’s actually four months old now and already obsolete) doesn’t have an Ethernet port. I’ve been living with wifi only up until now, but I just bought a [amazon text=Thunderbolt adapter&asin=B008ALA6DW] for it. It got here on Tuesday. I’m not sure I see a whole lot of speed difference, but the hardwired connection is a bit more reliable, I believe. In any case, I love my new adapter.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: Jolly Rancher football injury!

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 a picture of the dashboard on our car at 4:33 this afternoon, August 28, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Notice anything unusual, Loyal Readers? That’s right, it’s zero degrees Fahrenheit. Kind of cold for August in Vegas, huh? This Great Art was taken at a stoplight on our way home from LRN4’s medical appointment and grocery store run. Immediately after the shot, I rebooted the car, at which time the thermometer read 101. I think we may have a bit of a warranty issue. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Machinery and Las Vegas series.

I can’t help noticing the Microsoft logo there on the dash. Is this the moral equivalent of a bluescreen?

I also can’t help noticing the song that was playing. That’s right, I’m cool.

LRN4 is doing pretty well today. She continues to feel weak and look very thin. I checked out the Nexavar website today and noticed the warning that the drug may cause fatigue and weight loss – even anorexia in some cases. Fortunately, LRN4’s appetite is still there, but we may have a smoking gun to explain her current weakened, thin state. The good news is that she’ll probably start gaining the weight back and otherwise getting back to normal after she’s finished taking the drug. And if it helps her get into remission and stay there, it’ll definitely be worth it.

Made a little bit of progress on the app today. I feel like I keep going down rabbit holes, but I’m making slow progress. I spent some time working on making the report generation much more generic but kept running into reasons why I couldn’t do it. I think maybe I need to either refocus those efforts into smaller bits of the puzzle or just abandon them entirely and recognize that report-generating code is hard to make generic. There’s still more work to do on the emails, by the way. I need to figure out how to capture the recipient’s email address so it can be saved. I can do it the easy way or the clever way. Not quite sure how to do it the clever way, so easy may end up winning out tomorrow.

I don’t think I’ll get much more done tonight. I need to sleep so I’m safe to spend eight hours (or possibly much more) driving back and forth to Los Angeles.

That’s right, we’re going for a visit to the City of Hope tomorrow. We’ll see our doctor for a regular visit and LRN4 will get another bone marrow biopsy. We won’t know whether she’s in remission for at least a couple of days after that, so we’ll be anxious.

We also need to pick up a couple of prescriptions at Walgreen’s near the hospital and check our post office box. We don’t expect to be back on the road before about 5:00 PM, which is just about the worst possible time to be on the freeway leaving Los Angeles on the Thursday before a holiday weekend. So we might be moving extremely slowly. Or maybe we’ll be surprised and just sail home. But I’m not counting on that.

LRN2 is coming home on Friday! I can’t wait to see him again. I’m sure we’ll have a really nice time together. I don’t think he’s too excited about moving back in with us, but I’m hoping for the best and feeling good about it. He’s driving his car home and his stuff is hitching a ride with LRN4’s brother, who is coming with his wife to visit us for the holiday weekend. LRN29 and her husband are also coming, so all the brothers and sisters will be together. It ought to be a nice weekend.

And that’s about it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: violent cupcake fight!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a customized manhole cover.  I’m displaying this in honor of LRN2’s birthday!  He’s a fan of Steam-powered games, you know.  This Great Art is humbly submitted as my entry for their new logo design.  Not that they’re looking for one, of course.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken here at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Machinery series.

Happy birthday to LRN2!  He’s no longer a teenager.  In fact, there are no more teenagers left in our little family and there will never be another.  That’s kind of a bittersweet thing, actually.  It was wonderful watching the kids grow and mature.  There’s more growth to watch in the future, of course, but a milestone has been passed.

However, there are grandchildren – not only LRN12, but also whatever others may come along.  And I certainly hope there will eventually be more.  Although LRN12 is pretty great on her own.

Wonders of WordPress today, by the way.  It’s actually Saturday evening as I write this.  I got busy and forgot.  What was I busy with?  Why, celebrating LRN2’s birthday, of course!  Well, no, not really.  We talked with him today and swapped some congratulatory texts and emails.  But that was about it.  He and LRN1 did some celebrating themselves – they tell me they went to see the recent [amazon asin=B00AZMFK3K&text=Star Trek Movie] at their local dollar theater.  They both said it was good.  I’ll have to check it out when it comes around for free.

LRN2 also reported an enjoyable birthday dinner with his maternal grandparents.  Thanks, maternal grandparents!

Otherwise, it’s been a good day.  LRN4 continues to do well.  As of Saturday night, she’s completed 8 of 10 chemo treatments.  Her stomach is doing well.  She continues to lose a kilogram or so of weight pretty much every day.  We don’t consider this to be a good thing.  Significant muscle loss happened during previous rounds of chemo and had been finally noticeably improving just before her relapse.  So we’re pretty sure it’s happening again.  The encouraging thing is that we know it will come back, eventually.

LRN4 also reports that her fingertips are getting more red and painful.  Not good.  We’ll talk to our doctor about it on Monday – I think she can make it until then.  If not, we have options.

We sent away to our insurance company’s mail-order pharmacy for some of LRN4 prescriptions today.  Our insurance gives very good coverage for prescriptions from local pharmacies for the first three months.  After that, the prices go way up if you don’t start using their mail-order service.  Now’s our time for that.  The one little complication is that we keep having changes made and I wouldn’t like to waste too much money on expensive prescriptions that we end up only needing for a few days.  Fortunately, the total price of the four 90-day prescriptions I ordered today is less than $6.50.  So we’ll be okay on those no matter what, I think.

My work progress has actually picked up quite a bit, I’m delighted to report.  I gave the project some additional thought and realized I had added a level of complication that simply wasn’t necessary.  So I took that out, had a bit of a consultation session with LRN1 to figure out how to unbreak a thing or two I had broken, and I’m back in business.  There are still lots of functionality issues to address, but the iPad version is working well enough for LRN31 to do some beta testing, just to see if it does what she had hoped.  I might be able to rope in a few other beta testers soon as well – principally LRN8, if she’s interested.  I’ll contact LRN31 on Sunday to start going through the work needed to sign her up.

Oh, I also have the iPhone version of the app about 60% functional!  That implementation is much easier to do, being less complex visually, so I expect to have it fully functional by Monday – or at least equally functional to the iPad version, anyway.  I’m taking Sunday off and will work on my cryptography class instead.

Did I mention that LRN1 has a new job?  Well, he does.  He’s joining a small iOS and Android development firm in Denver.  He starts in a little bit more than a week.  I’m really excited for him – I’m sure he’ll love Denver and I’m also pretty sure he’ll love the job.  It’s a very small company, so he’ll get a lot of visibility.  I’m sure he’ll thrive there.

The response to my video mentioned a couple days ago has been fairly large.  Unfortunately, I took my blank DVDs home when we overnighted in Las Vegas last weekend, but I can get more.  So for those Loyal Readers who are coming here soon, I’ll get something burned before you get here.  For others, I’ll probably do it when we get home.  Don’t expect much – it’s just a whole bunch of photos including LRN4 – great ones, good ones, bad ones, sharp ones, fuzzy ones, etc. – and some music.  I didn’t even do the Ken Burns effect.  Although I guess I could modify it to try that.  Might work on that.  Might not.  I kind of like what I have now.

Anyway.  We ran out today for a tiny bit of shopping.  I got a couple pairs of jeans, LRN4 got some shoes, and I got my very own [amazon asin=B007X5RERW&text=power squid]!  I’ve wanted one of those things for years.  They’re way better than a power strip (of which I seemingly have dozens) because you can use every outlet, no matter how big your wall warts are.  LRN4 noticed it on one of the junk tables at Ross for only about ten bucks.  Its packaging was a bit torn in one spot, which possibly explains the low, low price, but the squid itself is cosmetically perfect and presumably functionally perfect as well.  I’ll plug it in soon and make sure.  In any case, I’m inordinately excited to have it.

We’ve been so frustrated with the terrible, horrible, unreliable Wifi service here at the hospital that we decided to go to the local public library for a couple hours today, just for their free Wifi.  As a bonus, they have actual tables that both of us can sit at and use our computers and even have a reference book or two open at the same time.  Their Wifi is kind of slow, but it didn’t constantly disconnect us for 5-20 minutes at a time, so the experiment was a great success.  We’ll be going back.  Besides, it’s also kind of good to get out of the house to work every once in a while.  At home, we have an office we can use for working and a living room, bedroom, exercise room, kitchen, dining room, garage, and yard we can use for everything else.  Here, not so much.  So it’s nice to have someplace else to go.

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

See you on Monday.

Here is part of an antique steam-powered threshing machine.  Unless I miss my guess, this is the connecting rod from the piston to whatever is the drive wheel.  The high-pressure steam is injected into the cylinder over there on the left.  An external-combustion engine!  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the corn maze we walked through in Pennsylvania last October, and part of my famous Machinery series.

It’s not part of the Train series, unfortunately, since it’s not part of a train.  But it is a steam engine, which is totally cool!

Excellent day!  LRN4 is doing very well today and continues to make amazing progress.  She truly looks stronger and better every day.  Today was also amazing because we saw LRN12!  She and her other grandma were here for a few hours, along with LRN29’s always-appreciated regular visit.  We had a great time with the visit and miss our sweet little granddaughter already.  We need to meet again soon!  Hopefully in Las Vegas next time.  Or maybe at her place.  But definitely soon.

Made progress on the app again today.  Other than a couple of crashing bugs I still need to chase down, the function I’ve been working on for the past several days is good to go.  I’ve done much of the brainwork for the next feature today and hope to get it functional tomorrow.  After that, I have a couple more important features to add, the iPhone version screens to lay out and get working, the artwork to get created and attached, and the app to ship.

After I get my iOS developer account changed from an individual to a business account, that is.  Oh, and also get my account set up with a checking account.  Oh, and also get a business checking account.  But I think that’s about it.  Should be able to get it all done before we go home, don’t you think?

Oh, I also need to finally set up my bug tracking database for the app.  During development, I was just doing the work.  Even though I still have a lot of development work to do, I need to start keeping track of the things I’m finding.

Oh, I also need to write the help text.  And probably a whole bunch of other things.  But I still think I can probably get it done before we leave.  Maybe.

We watched a hilariously bizarre movie this evening – [amazon asin=B000R7I3XM&text=Blades of Glory].  It’s a tossup between the hilarious and bizarre, if you ask me.  It’s just . . . indescribable.  Watch it.  Highly recommended.

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

See you tomorrow.