Daley Ponderings

Jonathan loves to create meals and side dishes.  On 10/2, he made a vegetable salad that we have recreated several times.  Carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, onions, with one lemon's worth of juice as a dressing.  Simple and delicious.

10/12 - I was in the basement doing laundry when the phone rang.  It was Sanda.  She was trying to take a shower and all the water disappeared! It just struck me funny to get a phone call from upstairs.

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I forgot to post yesterday that I am now officially working from home full-time.  Woohoo!  Now I just need to catch up on all of the work that I have been postponing until now.

Jon asked me to post this essay written by our friend.

Life as an Immigrant

By Marc Brands

From 1993 to 1996 I did an apprenticeship in Electronics Engineering at Siemens. In Switzerland apprenticeships are very common, students attend about 16 hours of classes and about 32 hours of practical training per week at an employers' site.  (More)

So - where can I buy one of these?

We headed out Friday morning, listening to The Nutmeg of Consolation by Patrick O'Brian on the way.  At our first stop, for gas, Jon realized that he hadn't brought his wallet.  One of our stops was at our "usual" rest area, the one with the pedestrian walkways over the highway.  The boys liked watching the cars and trucks go under.  Jon had some Lime Daley issue to deal with, so we waited in a really long line at McDonald's while he used the free wireless. (More)

This game would be better if it were random, but still kind of fun.  I think 17 seconds was my high score on my desktop, and I just it again before posting on my laptop, and I only got to 11 seconds.  Perhaps I am just more tired, or else it might be showing the difference between a mouse and touchpad.

A bunch of people made a neat video of a lot of kids using augmentative communication devices.  My guess is that most of the devices are made by DynaVox, the company where I currently (for a little while longer) work.  It is neat to see our technology making a difference in people's lives.

I got a couple spams through my Lime Daley contact form the last couple days, so I took another look at the script that I was using.  I wrote it a year or two ago, and was my first attempt at writing an anti-spam tool that was designed to have a 0% false negative rate (ie. humans can't possibly fail - as opposed to the image recognizer thing, which I fail about 20% of the time, so I imagine less technical people people must fail and/or give up more often than that).

The one on the Lime Daley page isn't as good as the one I wrote for this blog, but I took a look at the statistics this morning, and it blocked 544 spams last month, only allowing three through. (More)

Sunday morning, after playing outside before church, Jonathan came to me complaining that his eye hurt.  It was red and watering, but I could not see any foreign object.  It continued to be irritated, so I wondered if it might be pinkeye.

The pain would come in waves, hurting the most when he closed his eyes, as for naps and bedtime.  This made me wonder if there was something under his eyelid.

It was not better by yesterday, so we had Dr.Anderson check it out while we were there for Noah.  He did the glow-in-the-dark eye thing and we definitely saw scratches.  It was obvious to me the difference between what his eye looked like and what Jon's and Noah's eyes looked like when they had the same dye test but no abrasions.

Jonathan did appreciate the mirror (which dear nurse Theresa found after much searching) so he could see his own glowing eye.

And guess what?  All those ducts and passages are connected!  What did we see a minute later but a drip of glowing liquid seeping out of his nose... 

Dr.Anderson looked as best he could under both eyelids but could not find any particle.  He prescribed an antibiotic ointment (like the stuff you put on your cuts before you put the bandaid on) and referred us to an eye specialist. 

So Jonathan has an appointment for tomorrow morning.  His eye looks horrible (he has a hard time restraining himself from rubbing so the outside is red too) and we have to put the medicine in four times a day.  That stings, so it has not been a pleasant experience, but this morning he handled it better than the two times yesterday.

I'm hoping tomorrow will bring a definitive answer and a move towards healing.  Please pray for my dear little boy!  It is hard to see him in pain. 

Noah is 30lb 12 oz, 34 1/2" tall.  He's getting over a cold, so the doctor could see fluid in both ears, but it's mild and Noah doesn't even care about it. (More)

Both boys like to help me with the laundry.  Jonathan can unload the washer completely independently (standing on a stool and leaning nearly all the way in!)  Then he tosses the wet clothes on the dryer door (opens downward to form a shelf of sorts) and Noah pushes or throws the clothes into the dryer.  All while I do something else useful! (More)

I got a security notice that I should upgrade from version 5.32 of Winamp to 5.35, so I downloaded the upgrade (and noticed that it supports my Creative Labs portable MP3 player - I'll have to check that out at some point), and once the install was mostly finished, got this message: 

I'd say the "I'm smart" status message is proving that the programmer wasn't all that smart, since I am seeing his debug messages... 

Peter was nice enough to loan me a Kill-A-Watt for a couple weeks to investigate power usage around our home.  I have thought about buying one before, but borrowing one is certainly better, though it is quite a bit of fun to test out devices to see how much power they use.

I first tried it on our dental water pik, and it is 30 watts when it is being used, and 0 when it is not.  In Pittsburgh (at 11.3 cents per kWh), a 50 watt device running for a minute costs just under a penny.  Our chest freezer runs at 83 watts when it is cooling, and 0 watts when it is not (pretty good, I think).  I let it run for a day and the grand total is 9.4 cents ($3/month). (More)

I am sorry to report that I am below average, when compared to college and high school seniors in the United States with regard to knowledge of history.

Here is a quiz to see how you do. 

Here is a brief review of Organizing for your Brain Type by Lanna Nakone.  This is a neat book that gives some explanation about why some people have trouble keeping things organized and why some have trouble understanding those others. (More)