morrowlife

Here’s a teeny little man-made pile of rocks right in the middle of a whole bunch of big rocks. Plus, some added bonus running water! See if you can spot the rock pile there, Loyal Readers. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during our visit to Zion and Bryce National Parks in September of this year, and part of my famous Vacation series.

Pretty good day. Went to the automotive upholstery shop for about the fifth time today. They still don’t have the right material. He called another supplier while I was there, but the right guy wasn’t there. So he sent me back home yet again. On the positive side, he’s knocking forty bucks off of the price. If and when he eventually does the work, that is.

LRN4 is doing okay today. Her infection doesn’t seem to have started healing yet. Antibiotics take time to work. We just need them to start working Real Soon Now. She needs to start healing up right now. Her fever has been kind of bouncing up and down all day, going along with some chills. Hold on a second, I’ll check it right now.

I’m back. It’s not good – 102.8 degrees. I’m calling the doctor tomorrow morning. If she needs to be in the hospital for a few days to get the infection under control, we really need to get that going now. We’re still scheduled to fly to Houston late Sunday night. It won’t work all that well for me to go by myself.

Did a little bit of work on the app for my brother today. I think we have it pretty much buttoned up and ready to submit to Apple. He’s taking a little time to test the actually functionality – it would be really embarrassing for him to release a cool little tool for people in his industry, only to have them find out it doesn’t work right. That goes from cool to very damaging, reputation-wise. So he’s running some test cases. After that, I think we’ll submit it. It’s been fun working on it.

Now I need to update my business website to kind of split it into three different parts – tools for forensic medical people, tools for teachers, and freelance iOS/Android development. I’ve been looking at options and I just need to dig in and get it done. I feel like I’m trying to do too many things at once, and I’m pretty sure it will come back to bite me.  Maybe one of them will take off and it will be clear where my post-Lockheed career is going. Or maybe not.

We just learned that our California doctor’s father died last week. Very sorry to hear that. We spend so much time with these people that they really start to feel like family. Our doctor is a young guy, so I wonder if it was an expected thing. We’ll probably never find out, which is okay.

And it’s past bedtime (again), so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: Samurai sword-wielding, knife-throwing shrimp attack!

See you tomorrow.

Here are the insides of an old steam shovel. Well, it’s actually an old electric shovel. But who’s counting? Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the old mining museum in Cedar City, Utah, and part of my famous Machinery and Vacation series.

Pretty great couple of days. All the kids and their significant others are here, except LRN15, who is sorely missed. But we’re having a great time anyway, in spite of our deep sorrow at her absence. Hopefully, she’s having a restful and productive week.

We went to the Ethel M chocolate factory last night to see their cactus garden-based Christmas light display.  It was really beautiful, kind of surprisingly. We stopped in the gift shop for a cup of hot chocolate and then took their self-serve factory tour. Which was also interesting. Stayed quite a while watching the factory workers work. Dance, monkey, dance!

Today, all the male members of the family, including the Loyal Brother-in-law, went shooting. The females were invited but all declined. I guess we’re just not that much fun. But we had a great time. the LBIL took us to an outdoor range down in Boulder City. it was uncrowded and very nice. They have the range divided into several bunker-like areas, so you get your own little mini-range. It was great to have just the six of us there. LRN3 has extensive firing range experience, so he was our safety officer.

I brought my .22 and .25 pistols and my .22 rifle.  The LBIL brought his .22 and 9mm pistols and another .22 rifle. We all got in just about as much shooting as we wanted and had a great time together. Then we had lunch at Roberto’s and came home. Fun.

LRN4 is doing pretty well today. She’s getting red blood cells tomorrow and platelets on Sunday. Her stamina is very good, she’s looking great, and all’s well. We’re looking at an opportunity to go to MD Anderson hospital in Houston for a new clinical trial. Stay tuned for future developments. We really don’t want to go to Houston (too far from home), but we do want LRN4 to get well. We really want that.

The kids have been using our Wii quite a bit since they all got here. LRN3 brought a bunch of GameCube games and a couple of controllers with him and Mario Kart continues to be a big hit. Nobody seems to want to play our Wii Sports games. Those Mario Brothers really know what they’re doing.

No work today or yesterday. I guess I’m on vacation. I’m okay with that.  I did have a brief conversation with LRN23 today about the new app. I guess that counts as work, no? I might think about it again tomorrow too.

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

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 Detroit zoo. Not exactly all of the Detroit zoo, of course. But it is a sign. Bears and giraffes and great apes, oh my! Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam (the old 3G exclusive iPhone-cam, that is), taken during a vacation to Detroit in June 2011, and part of my famous Vacation series.

I’m not going with my famous Statue series on this one. Even I have standards. A sign is not a statue. Well, I guess it could happen, assuming the sign maker is a true artiste. Okay, what the heck. Also part of my famous Statue series. And while I’m at it, the sign does mention a train and food service, so it’s part of my famous Train and Food series too. But that’s it.

Been a good couple of days since I last posted. LRN4 is now three days into her current ten-day round of chemo and we’re hopeful for continued improvement. She’s feeling great. As of Monday, her white cell count was still at 0.8, so we’re hoping this round drops it even lower. She has upped her Nexavar intake to two pills a day and she’s doing just fine with that quantity. So things are going very well.

I’m still worried about my beloved pickup. As I may have mentioned before, it runs very rough for the first minute or so after startup when it’s been sitting for three or four days. There’s no smoke and no check engine light. I decided to call the shop that installed the new engine and discovered that they’re no longer in business. Fortunately, I believe my engine warranty is good at other shops. Need to dig it out of the file cabinet and check. My current theory is that there’s a slow coolant leak into one of the cylinders, which is a very bad thing indeed. It could be something else, but I’m struggling to guess what that might be. Very, very bad.

I have an 1.5 terabyte external drive made by Seagate. It works perfectly with a PC, but not at all with a Mac. I’ve been struggling with it for years. After doing some internet research, I discovered that Seagate external drives have some circuitry that automatically shuts the drive off after 10 or 15 minutes of non-use. This seems to work fine on a PC, but it makes a Mac eject the disk every time. Seagate has released two or three different attempts to make the drive play nicely with a Mac, but none of them work. How can the drive manufacturer not be able to figure out how to disable or override that feature? Well, they can’t. It turns out the only solution is to buy a different enclosure, [amazon text=which I did&asin=B0065DUJ0C]. The price was great and reviews were at least decent. It came today. Installation of the drive was simple and very quick, and it has been working perfectly so far. Finally, that drive appears to be reliable. Note to self – no more Seagate drives. Ever.

LRN4’s chemo/doctor visit appointment is at 7:45 tomorrow morning, so that’s it for tonight. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: whipped cream assault!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4 in front of a bunch more hoodoos in Bryce National Park. Wasn’t it a beautiful day? It wasn’t really as cold as LRN4’s bundled-up appearance might make you think. She was just feeling cold that day. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Bryce National Park during our recent vacation there, and part of my famous Vacation series.

It was a bit cold that day; just not quite as cold as you might think. At least it was sunny. On the other hand, it was windy. Otherwise, it was perfect.

Good day today. We saw LRN4’s third-string doctor, who is a lady we both like very much. Our normal Las Vegas doctor was on vacation. Her white cell count is down to 0.8, so it continues to improve. Chemo resumes on Monday, undoubtedly pushing the white cell count even lower. Things are going as they should at this point. Three cheers!

We leave for Salt Lake City early tomorrow morning. Not that I particularly love getting up early, but it has to be done. I got the Taurus filled and washed it and my beloved pickup today. So the car is ready to go. Still need to pack tonight. Also need to do a few dishes, pick up the mail, and finish this blog post. I’m really looking forward to a nice weekend. Bloggage might not happen tomorrow, just for my Loyal Readers’ information.

I got some excellent news on the beloved pickup front this morning. Due to the truck’s age, the driver’s seat bottom cushion has torn. I went to my local Ford dealer a few weeks ago to see about ordering a new seat cover. Sadly, they told me the part has been discontinued and is no longer available at any Ford dealer in the country. I didn’t know what to do. LRN4 mentioned to me today that she had seen an automotive upholstery shop very close to our house. I went over there and had them check it out. It turns out that there’s a company that makes exact duplicates of pretty much every automotive upholstery fabric ever made. He quoted me a very reasonable price and I ordered it. The fabric should arrive in a couple weeks and it will take one day to do the work. I’m really excited to get that done!

I know I shouldn’t get that excited about automotive upholstery, but it is my beloved pickup, after all

I got an email from Apple today telling me that developers can download a free copy of OS X Server. So I did. I installed it on Shemp, my old MacBook from 2009. That’s the machine I originally bought for LRN1 to use before he went to Guatemala. When he left, it was handed down to LRN4. When he got back, we got him a newer machine, so LRN4 kept it. When I bought New Curly in June of this year, I gave LRN4 Old Curly (now named Shannon) and she gave me Old Shannon, which I renamed Shemp. Got that, Loyal Readers?

Anyway. The old machine has plenty of power to run OS X Server, so that’s what it’s doing. I retired Larry, my FreeNAS-based power-sucking server this evening and put Shemp in its place. Larry will hang out in a closet somewhere until he’s either permanently retired or repurposed yet again. Don’t know where to put it, which is a great motivating factor for getting rid of it.

So now Shemp is serving a Time Machine volume and I’m getting ready to set it up as a regular file server also. I can also set up a calendar share server, a web server, a mail server, a local wiki server, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And it’s so easy! And it just works! I love it.

Okay, it’s time to get all that other stuff done. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: baboon burglar!

See you tomorrow.