morrowlife

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 a manhole cover.  But it’s a very special manhole cover.  Check out where it’s from.  One of my favorite places!  I think that’s part of my shoe there on the bottom.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive old Minolta-cam, taken in May of 2011 during one of our great visits to Detroit, and part of my famous Vacation series.

Should I have made it part of my famous Machinery series too?  Under normal circumstances, I would, of course.  But I already have another famous series to put it in.  So maybe I won’t.

I had a much nicer camera when I took that picture, by the way.  Don’t remember why I took the old Minolta on that trip.  Must have been because it fit in a shirt pocket.  I really liked that about that camera.  Still have it, in fact.  It had kind of a low pixel count and some dead pixels, but it had a true zoom lens and halfway decent optics.  Not totally decent optics, but halfway.  On the other hand, the exclusive iPhone-cam has a great pixel count and takes pretty good pictures.  But it has no zoom lens.  But it also fits in a pocket and I always have it with me.  So I use it pretty much exclusively these days.

Anyway.  Had another good day.  We visited LRN4’s doctor, which means she also got a blood test done.  The great news is that her red cells, white cells, and platelets were all pretty good today – no blood products needed at all.  None of them are at normal levels yet, of course, but she’s going longer all the time between transfusions.  So it was a great day.  The doc tweaked a couple of medication levels – raised one and lowered another – and pretty much that was it.  She has another chemo treatment on her spine scheduled for a week from tomorrow.  Not a fun thing, but necessary.

No progress on my iOS app so far today, but I’m hoping to get some stuff done tonight.  Planning on a brief consultation with LRN1 to help me clarify my thinking – I need to figure out some architectural issues before I can make much more progress and it will be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

And that’s about it for tonight.  More news on the app tomorrow.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: fire-alarm-triggering cow!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4 with a simulated Native American friend.  That’s LRN4 there on the left.  I’m trying to decide whether this type of thing is offensive.  I’m part Native American and I’m not offended.  Wikipedia can’t decide.  How about you, Loyal Readers?  Should I censor this Great Art?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during our 2012 East Coast cruise, and part of my famous Statue and Vacation series.

Happy first day of summer!  One of my favorite days of the year!  Of course, it’s also the longest day of the year, which is also one of my favorite things.  Unfortunately, that means it’s all downhill from here for the next six months.  Still, we won’t let that ruin our celebration, will we?  LRN4 and I celebrated the long, beautiful day by taking a long, beautiful walk right before sunset.  Couldn’t have been nicer.

No post yesterday and today’s post is courtesy of the Wonders of WordPress.  I was extremely busy and unable to write.  I got a new computer!  It’s another [amazon asin=B007474DSM&text=MacBook Pro] – this time a fifteen-incher with the Retina display, a 2.7 GHz quad-core i7 chip, 16 GB of memory, 1 GB of video memory, and a 512 GB solid state hard drive.  It’s beautiful and unbelievably fast.  I love it.  I got the bigger screen to make it easier to program on while still remaining small and light enough to easily carry around.  Mission accomplished.

There were a few challenges moving my user account over to the new machine – everything transferred, but the email didn’t want to be upgraded to the latest version of mail.app.  It took several tries until I finally figured out that I just needed to transfer the mail folder over from the old machine again.  Lots of people have had this problem and they came up with all kinds of ways to resolve it, but this one was the easiest-looking and it worked for me.  So I’m good.

I also had lots of trouble getting Boot Camp installed.  For some reason, the Windows bootup couldn’t recognize the boot disk I had created on a thumb drive.  I tried all kinds of ways to fix that and discovered that I needed to start it with the Option key held down and select the thumb drive itself as the boot drive.  Then it was smooth sailing.

Speaking of booting, does this machine boot fast or what?  Answer: it boots fast.  Incredibly fast.  The solid-state drive has a lot to do with that, of course – it’s amazing.  Applications start effectively immediately and the thing boots in just a few seconds.  Everyone should have one of these.

I also got a new [amazon asin=B009W9AEOM&text=iPad] on Thursday.  My old first-gen iPad was having problems.  It’s still working perfectly, but I had constant app crashes when I tried to view complex web pages.  It had become practically unusable to me.  I handed it down to LRN4, though, and it’s working great for her.  I got the 4G iPad with Retina display and 32 GB of memory.  Also got the [amazon asin=B0060GEWFC&text=leather cover].  It’s all beautiful, fast, and sleek.  Ought to last me another few years.  Also, they’re both used for business, so they’re deductible on my income taxes.  Hooray for owning a business!

Of course, I still need to make some income from which to write off.  Working on that now.

Anyway.  LRN4’s doing well.  She’s a little discouraged at the slow pace of improvement.  In fact, her taste buds even appear to be getting a little worse.  That’s not encouraging.  Still, I continue to see steady progress.  She’s gotten past the quick, devastating, difficult part and done amazingly well.  Now she’s up against the slow recovery.  She’s doing fine with that too, but it’s a very different thing.

On Thursday, LRN4’s white cell count was up to 8.9!  That neupogen stuff works great!  Most other numbers were great too.  Interestingly, her platelet count was also up substantially over the post-transfusion numbers from Monday.  Hopefully, that means her new stem cells are really up to speed in that area too.

No new numbers until Monday.  We’re going to the clinic, eating, sleeping, resting, walking, reading, writing, and goofing around.  Pretty good life.

I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting toilet news: the world’s first toilet-themed amusement park!  Be sure to check out that sculpture garden.

See you on Monday.

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.