Daley Ponderings

I have been teaching Jonathan using a not-so-intense version of the programs recommended by The Institutes . I'm adding this post here, because I want to give updates as a kind of diary. But I wanted to clarify in public why I am doing it. If it really does work, what better and easier... (More)

I had just told my friend yesterday that I was getting discouraged about signing because Jonathan was not doing any except for an isolated sign here and there. Then today, he distinctly signed for "milk" several times! The first time, he was cranky and I asked him what he needed. I said, "do... (More)

In a recent post , I mentioned that our bed is a little too high for Jonathan to comfortably get off by himself. So today, I took the bed off the frame (and took the legs off the headboard, which was quite the job by myself, I should have waited for Jon to come home, but it's already done.)... (More)

I went to a dermatologist this morning to have a mole removed and a small skin lump checked out. My referring doctor said this dermatology practice is the best in Pittsburgh. However, I really am getting more and more disillusioned with medical practice as we know it. As soon as I walked in, I... (More)

I have been evaluating different version control programs for my company for the last month or two. My current evaluation is that all of them are broken, although I hope to discover a good solution someday soon. Serena's Version Manager (PVCS) I have spent a lot of time with Version... (More)

There is a spot of wall on the landing of our basement stairs that has been getting soggier as the summer progresses. We've had lots of rain, and every time it rained hard enough, the spot would be damp. I finally called someone who advertised in the Pennysaver and he came this afternoon.... (More)

Jonathan likes to watch me "take the diapers out of the washer and put them into the dryer." This evening, he closed the dryer door before I had finished transferring the diapers. So I asked him to please open the door, and he did! Then, when I had finished, I said, "ok, now it is time to... (More)

Jonathan and I now have this fun game where we sit on the bed and fall back. He will do this by himself now, and he thinks it's very funny. Also, the other day, he did several practice trials of getting off the bed feet first. It's still a little high for him to comfortably get all the way on... (More)

A couple guys here at work have been working on some puzzles. They didn't like my solution to the 3rd puzzle, as they wanted it to be more math base and not like programming. Here are the puzzles: Assume: a and b are positive integers. ( I think this condition only matters for the third... (More)

On all the windows machine I use, I have auto-completion turned on for the dos prompt. Apparently, I must have gotten that behavior from TweakUI , and since I always install it on a new machine, I thought it was on by default, but apparently not.If you don't have TweakUI, you can edit the... (More)

Speakeasy is my DSL provider. Snurgle.org also uses them, so that is how I heard about them. We have been using them for a year or so, and the ten times or so that I had to open a customer support ticket, it has gone quite well, and fairly fast response time (within a couple of days at the... (More)

I signed up with Citibank/Mastercard my freshman year in college. I used to sign up for stuff on campus quite often, as they would give me various free things, t-shirts, radios, $100 gift certificates, etc. I also felt somewhat sorry for the vendors, as their income was $1 every time they got... (More)

When I returned our Lingo VOIP modem, I asked UPS to get a signature, since I figured Lingo would try to say they never received it or something. Below is a picture of the signature UPS got from "L Manwiller". And I thought my signature was bad... I wonder if signatures just don't mean... (More)

Someone off-handedly mentioned on the midwives list that so-called "crack babies" are really mis-named. While crack is certainly not the thing to do, medical research says that it isn't any worse than alcohol or tobacco. There are a number of articles, like this one that can be found from... (More)

Jonathan fell down one whole flight of stairs all by himself this afternoon. ): All three of us were up in the computer room, and he was happily exploring the floor. Then Jon said, "is something burning?" and I suddenly recalled that I had been making dinner. I rushed downstairs, and in my... (More)