Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger Juliette Ochieng, better known as Baldilocks.
Today was also the birthday of my grandmother’s sister Shirley, who died a few years ago.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger Todd Sattersten, who is 36 today.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Jay: Well Then…
That was a longer day than expected.
We got to the medical center at 8:11 this morning. It took extra time signing in, because a new chart had to be created and all, but then they brought us in for the baby’s checkup almost immediately.
He was born 8 lbs 4 oz, left the hospital at, IIRC, 7 lbs 10 oz, and is up to 8 lbs 2 oz as of today. He was also measured at 18 inches when born, but was a definitely accurate 20 1/4 inches today, so that confirms the birth height was inaccurate. Either that or he grew a good two inches in a week…
People oohed and ahed over him, naturally, and he was his usual mellow self.
We did have a brief wait before going in to have Deb’s spectacular wound (Deb and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Bruise?) examined and staples removed. That led to much chatting with one of the midwives. The baby had fussed and been restless for me, though singing seems to sooth him most of the time. The midwife held him and he settled down. When we were done, I went to change him again and there was his cord stump, broken off, loose under his clothes. It was a bit premature to do that, and the wound looked so bad we took him right back over to our doctor’s side. The nurse had a look, told the doctor, and then had us wait in a room. Being out of sequence and all, it was quite a while, but the doctor popped in, looked at it, cleaned, cauterized and bandaged it, and assured us we did exactly the right thing, popping in. He should be healed in no time. Valerie’s seemed to be slightly early, as I recall, but it had only a small raw spot to heal after she lost the cord. Poor kid; that was apparently what he was fussing about, during the time it hurt most.
That made us far later than expected, so it was 11:11 when we left the doctor’s office. He recommended we go get lunch, and we were starving and still had to hit the store, so we did just that. By the time we were done at Wal-Mart, we got home just a little while ago. My brother should be by with four of his kids any time now, on his way to drop them back with their mother. That way they all get to see the baby and meet Deb’s mother. Perhaps he’d like to have supper with us before he heads back to Ohio, after he returns the kids…
Speaking of Wal-Mart, their brand of diapers fit Sadie and doesn’t give her a rash. So that requires they change them! They seem to be replacing all the standard White Cloud diapers with fancy ones that are a modified version of the same thing, but fewer to a package for the same price, rash-inducing, and ill-fitting. Go team! Wal-Mart risks becoming the Republican party of retailers at the rate they’re going; forgetting who their constituents are and why those people once shopped so heavily Republican. When your CEO loses his way, or never understood the business in the first place, you can go rapidly downhill.
Jay: One Week
Since it’s been eight days, we have Henry’s one week checkup this morning. Plus Deb’s staple removal. No posting until we do that and go to the store. No birthdays, either, unless I were to post John Curtis, the presumed father of yesterday’s birthday girl Vanessa, but apparently not the husband of Valerie Ann. The good thing is that I apparently have more extensive genealogy details than my cousin, while what he has lacks the inaccuracy we uncovered last night. Together it should be impressive. I ought to get more modern software, even if I have to retype all several hundred people.
Okay, back later.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Jay: It’s an Expensive Device
Why on earth would you manufacture the Blackberry to be almost inaudible at the loudest ring setting, using the most piercing tone?
It makes no sense.
Then it’s compounded by a limited ring duration.
It’s a Cell. Phone.
It’s not necessarily out where the sound will carry, rather than being muffled. It’s not necessarily instantly accessible and fumble or run-for-it free.
I may have just improved things slightly, but clearly there’s a good reason why almost every call ever received on my Blackberry has resulted in a “missed call.” Even when the phone was on me and I should have felt it vibrate, let alone heard the “and also ring” sounds.
Sigh…
At least the Nokia is almost loud enough, even though it has its own issues. That’s the one that will be the official business phone number. Until we explode in growth and get all formal about business phone service.
Jay: Pictures Not Showing?
If you use Firefox and can’t see the pictures on our blog, like the spate of recent ones of the kids, there is probably a setting you can change.
If you click Tools, Options, and then Content (that’s how it is in my version; yours may vary but looking for the same option should do you), there is a checkbox for “Load Images.” Normally that’s going to be checked, though if you’re on dialup and want to speed up your surfing, deselecting it would be what you’d want. Let’s assume you want to see pictures, or you wouldn’t have read this far.
There is a secondary checkbox, under and indented from the “Load Images” one. It is “for the originating web site only.” What that means is any pictures not hosted on the domain of the site you are viewing will not display if that is checked.
Why would you do that? Perhaps to avoid graphical ad content embedded one place, hosted another.
Trouble is, when we got low on space where AV and BB are hosted, we started putting pictures over at elhide.com, which is a different domain and a different hosting account. What we probably should do one of these years is consolidate and/or separate. By that I mean expand the capacity of one account, host additional domains on it, and take advantage of the presumed boost in space at a lower cost than for a second account. The only thing is, each hosting account is on a different server, so when one is funky or down, another is up, unless the host is really having trouble. To cope with that, it would make sense to host some with one host and some with another, which will probably happen in the next year, depending what expires when and how much of a pain things will be to move.
Meanwhile, any pictures I post at blogblivion.com are actually living at elhide.com, so blocking externally sourced images will hide them.
Jay: Pet Peeve
I use Outlook Express. I’m not even ashamed to admit it, because I like the program and have had little cause to complain over the years, and alternatives have fallen short. Currently on this computer I have 25 e-mail accounts setup, though a few of them are disabled.
There are various reasons for various accounts.
Thus I might like an e-mail signature, sig for short, on mail from one account for one purpose, on another account for a different purpose, and on yet another account not at all.
In theory Outlook Express is setup to handle this. You can create a sig, bring up an account list, and check off which accounts will use that sig.
In practice, the first sig you create is the “default” and will go on every e-mail. Unless you create a second sig and associate it with an account. In that case, the default account rules. That is, when you create a new e-mail, you automatically create one using the default account. It gets that sig. When you switch which address the e-mail is to be from, the sig doesn’t change to the appropriate one for that other account.
You basically have to change which account is the default on the fly, or insert a sig manually, if it’s a new e-mail. Replying on a particular account works for inserting the appropriate sig.
Annoying. Perhaps it’s fixed in the newer version, or switching to a new version of full-fledged Outlook would be the thing to do, using the new machine. I don’t like Outlook’s footprint, but it’s an excellent program, which I already use for birthdays and appointments and, sketchily, for tasks. By not using it for e-mail, I only need to run it once in the morning and then if I want to consult it elsewhen during the day. Heck, it appears the version I have supports multiple accounts. I’m used to Outlook 98 and 97 not doing so.
Anyway, easy enough to insert manually, or make the one I most want the default and delete it as needed, which has been my method in the past. I just think things should work properly.
All this because part of my “opening for business” is to change the sig I’d used last week so it no longer announces the opening date, but instead indicates an active presence. That reminded me to look again at the sig to account assignments situation, and led to a post. Back to work…
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger and force of nature Glenn Reynolds.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To Vanessa Jayne Curtis, who is 20 today. She’s my second cousin once removed, daughter of the other Valerie in the family, whose grandfather was my grandfather’s brother, John Henry Ellis.
On another note, I just noticed that my father’s cousin Diane is married to a Gordon Ramsay. Obviously not the Gordon Ramsay, but amusing nonetheless.
Update:
After finding out some of this info is wildly wrong and I apparently have garbage data in places, I rushed home hoping to update the post before someone like, say, Wally could see it. He beat me to it in the comments. Jeez.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To Karen Smith, last known to me as an especially talented legal secretary, before she moved south for an offer her husband couldn’t refuse.
Jay: Pretty Wild
|
You Are a Haunted House |
 You are a deeply complicated and sometimes deeply disturbed person. You can’t help but be attracted to the dark side of life - even when it’s pretty gruesome. In relationships, you are honest and real. So real that it’s definitely a little scary. You don’t fake it or play along just to get along. And people either respect this… or deeply resent it Your life is thoughtful, deep, and even philosophical at times. You see the world as it is. You don’t sugar coat anything. Facing and fighting your fears is important to you. You believe that too much of life is whitewashed. You’re not too morbid… you just believe that you can’t enjoy life without exorcising a few demons first! At your best, you are brave, intense, and fearless. Not only do you face the abyss head on - you challenge your friends to do the same. At your worst, you are depressed and morose. If you’re not careful, your thoughts take over your mind… and they aren’t pretty! |
Via the Ferris Wheel, a ride that always terrified me.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Jay: Opening Week
Well, I open for business officially tomorrow, in keeping with my desire to wait until after the baby arrived, and in keeping with my guerilla marketing tactic of adding an e-mail sig saying as much to selected audiences when I announced the baby’s arrival last week.
Mainly that means finally taking the phone to a quiet spot, recording a voicemail greeting, trying to keep the phone in earshot, posting the actual number on the site, and oh right, finally posting at least some plans/offers and prices on the site. Not to mention tweaking the site further, making sponsorship of the CotC site official, giving out cards aggressively, signing up for potential sources of work at whatever prices, finishing organizing the office, which I made great strides on this weekend, and so forth.
Unless things goes absolutely crazy in the first couple weeks, I expect to look for side or temporary contract work to supplement, with the business more of a side thing. All while taking care of recovering the van to usability, cleaning out the old office, dueling over money and such, and going to a final spate of extra doctor appointments before things settle down. The baby has a one week, two week and one month. Valerie has an 18 month. Presumably Sadie will have an annual visit around the same time I have my next checkup the beginning of October. I suppose we ought to schedule that if it’s not already done. Once we’re out of early to mid October, I think we’re on a much reduced doctoring schedule. Yay! Circa October we also need to look into changing insurance. We have to be able to do it for less than $800 a month plus a few grand a year out of pocket. That shouldn’t rival or exceed things like rent and groceries. But I digress.
Okay, back to working on the office. Or going to bed, but it’s hot out there. In here I have the AC keeping it bearable.
Speaking of weather, it’ll be thirty years this fall since I bought a snowblower to make money clearing driveways more efficiently. Then we got a blizzard, followed no time later by the Blizzard of ‘78, followed by essentially no snow the rest of the winter. Talk about business disasters. A series of ordinary snows would have been lucrative and made the equipment an excellent investment. People would pay, say, $5 to shovel snow that could be done in, say, half an hour or less. People would pay, say, $10 to shovel snow that required as many as three man hours, and that was too deep for the snowblower to handle any more effectively than a teenager with a shovel. I had signed up a large number of customers and couldn’t handle them all because of the sheer time required. Things were made worse by the guys working for me, in one case doing the wrong driveway (either someone got a freebie, or they went rogue and hired out on their own while also getting paid by me), and in another case doing such a bad job I had to stand and take a nasty lecture and walk away empty handed when I went to collect. Heh. Before I ever learned to distrust employers, I learned to distrust employees.
Still, that’s a great example of something that was in fact not a stupid idea. I should probably have stuck to shoveling, but in a relatively normal winter, equipment would have made me so much more productive it would have at least covered itself and made the work more fun. I think I knew there was a risk of a snowless winter, but nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition Blizzard of ‘78.
Jay: Ellis Metal
Just as we can tell people that Valerie’s middle name was after a dragon, I figure I can tell people that Henry is named after my favorite Ayn Rand character. In about thirty years he can invent “Ellis Metal.” Then the government can go all Alcoa on him, confusing invention and efficiency with artificial monopoly. Fun.
Or I could say he’s named after a monarch you may have heard of, who rudely burned one of my ancestors at the stake. I almost typed “steak” just then…
When I look at what I have in the Ellis database in Brother’s Keeper, there are six Henrys in first or middle name position. It’s possible that another one who went by Harry was a Henry, but I’m not sure. Havelock Ellis was a Henry, making seven, which gives us the eighth.
There are four named Henry in the database that includes mainly my Irving side, with just the basics on the Ellis side. None are all that close, apparently, though one, Henry Westgate, was one of my great-grandmother’s three husbands, and the father of my grandfather’s half-brother Clarence, better known to us as Uncle Sonny.
We could always say we named him for a famous industrialist who revolutionized manufacturing. Or after a great baseball player. Or perhaps we expect him to at least be civil when he’s disobedient.
Then again, we could be mundane and admit that the name was inspired by the humorous guy who originally taught me to build computers, and who probably had a disproportionate influence on the course of my life that led to my meeting Deb.
Deb: Overheard in Our House…
Jay: I feel like a Pez dispenser.
JediMom: You look like one, too.
Jay: Sleeper
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