I seem to no longer need much sleep. This sudden change is quite convenient, since my son doesn’t need more than a few hours of sleep at stretch, especially at night. Actually, last night was a bit of turning point in Seb’s little life, as some gastro-intestinal issues sorta cleared themselves up, so he’s a much happier boy right now. We also stayed with Jen’s parents last night. It is usually her mom’s habit of spending a week or so with her daughters when they have a kid, but since she’s allergic to cats, and we have two of them, that just isn’t happening. We tried to go it alone on Wednesday night, but Seb’s little stomach issues hit him them, and that was a bit scary for a couple of first time parents.

Posted on 16 May 2003

Well, there is officially a baby in the house. The gang came back from the hospital this afternoon. Seb is being fed right now, then we’ll hunker down for one of our many catnights for the night.

I believe I mentioned something about turning up the volume on life as a reason/effect of having Seb. Well, we went to 11 on Monday. The delivery was everything we didn’t want–Jen was induced since she was 10 days late, she had an epidural since the contractions from the Pitocin were so intense, and poor Seb was, *ahem*, helped into the world with a pair of forcips. Labor lasted maybe 11 hours or so, but the delivery happened very quickly. Jen’s labor had been stalling (a by-product of the Pitocin), and she wasn’t making much progress. There was some concern about Seb’s health, as the intense contractions (again, a by-product of the Pitocin) were causing his heartrate to dip a bit lower than it should after each contraction. Then Jen’s doctor came in, checked her progress, and said “She’s complete, let’s deliver this baby.” At this point, I was lying on a couch reading when about 10 doctors and nurses came into the room. Next thing I knew, I was telling Jen to push and Seb was popped/pulled into the world….

Crazy. It was THE most intense thing I have ever experienced. I think we’re both still sorting through things, as exhaustion and elation are the most common things we’re feeling right now. The thing that is most strange to me is how comfortable and happy I am at the thought of being a dad. Ask my friends and family–I was not (and probably still aren’t) a kid-person. I’m not a huge fan of other people’s kids (though the disdain of my younger years has softened quite a bit), but I’m a huge fan of my kid.

Well, off to burp Seb then drift off to sleep with my family.

Posted on 14 May 2003

Well, after a week or so of waiting, we will going to the hospital this evening (at midnight) and Jen will be induced. This isn’t exactly how we planned it, and Jen wants a natural childbirth, but her doctors don’t want to wait around too long for the little guy to show himself. There still are four hours for labour to start though, and we have our fingers crossed….

In other news….

Marcus Gronholm won the Argentina Rally this afternoon. Again, an amazing rally for the Finn. He was two minutes down on Friday. Two minutes! That’s a lifetime these days, and generally a lead that big is safe as long as your car holds up and you don’t stuff it in the trees. Carlos Sainz regained second place after the turbo on Richard Burns’ Peugeot gave up during the final stage. It’s a close race at the top of the driver’s championship standings between Gronholm, Sainz, and Burns. Expect more competitive rallies in the months to come as the WRC moves to Europe for Cyprus and Greece.

Posted on 11 May 2003

Another interesting day on in the World Rally Championship. First, multiple stages were concerned due to overzealous crowds. This didn’t make many of the drivers in the top 5 happy, since the move limited the number of competitive kilometers left in the event. Once the action the got started though, Carlos Sainz was out to prove the rally was his to win. Or lose. Thanks to a misinterpreted gesture from his co-driver, Sainz reached a time checkpoint too early (yes, in rallying it is possible to go too fast) and was given a one minute penalty, dropping him from first to fourth.

Again, Marcus Gronholm has proven why he’s the top driver in the sport. After losing two minutes after finishing a stage yesterday on three wheels, Gronholm is in second place, fifteen seconds behind new leader Markko Martin. Richard Burns rounds out the top three, and he’s got to want to pass Gronholm again to further cement his lead in the driver’s championship. Harri Rovanpera and Petter Solberg round out the top 6.

Peugeot should retake the leader in the manufacturer’s series, with all three cars looking to finish in the top 5. Citroen was still looking good even after Colin McRae retired, but Sebastien Loeb stuffed his Xsara into the trees, leaving Sainz the sole Citroen driver. Subaru can only imagine what might have been had Solberg not rolled and had Tommi’s transmission not given up.

Posted on 10 May 2003

Day one of the Rally Argentina was rough and tumble and full of surprises. Marcus Gronholm was leading the charge early, but the Subaru’s of Tommi Makinen and Petter Solberg, and Citroen’s Carlos Saniz were keeping the margin close. Makinen began to charge on SS5, and pulled within 2 seconds of his fellow Finn. Solberg saw his chances disappear with a roll on SS4, though he only lost 2 minutes and should be in the points by the end of the rally. Makinen’s campaign was cut short on SS7 with a gearbox problem that left him to drive the day’s longest stage stuck in second gear. Suddenly Gronholm had a nice cushion until he hit a rock and destroyed a wheel. In case you’re weren’t sure if Gronholm was the best driver on the circuit, here’s more proof. He finished the stage, lost only about a minute to the new leaders, and should be fighting for a place on the podium by the end of the weekend.

So, heading into day two, Carlos Sainz is on top followed by Markko Martin and a brace of Peugeots (Burns, Rovanpera, and Gronholm). Seb Loeb is right behind them, so it should be an exciting day.

It will be interesting to see how this effects Makinen’s decision to return next year. He’s said he’s happy with Subaru, and happy driving with Solberg, but he’s had so many disappointments with Subaru….he was fighting for a win here last year when a shunt on the last day put him out of commission. If Tommi leaves Subaru (and retires) expect them to pursue Richard Burns or Colin McRae (who, by the way, also bowed out on day one with engine problems).

Yahoo Update

Managed to get my Yahoo mail account back. Seems the person who hijacked it was selling NBA tickets on eBay. Oddly, they didn’t delete any of my emails, and in fact, none of the new messages I had were even opened.

Posted on 10 May 2003

First…no baby yet….

Here’s an interesting article on Reason about Rick Santorum’s stoopid remarks about homosexuality. I had tried to write several entries about his ramblings, but I just could never get my feelings down. Anyway…Cathy Young does a good job pointing out the inherent problems of Santorum’s opinion from the side of privacy.

I must admit, I used to like George Will, but I’ve lost interest in him over the years because he’s become an intellectual knee-jerk conservative. I must admit though, his latest Newsweek column is spot on about labor unions and the logical somersaults most do to abuse their power and extort money from their members.

I guess I’m learning how to be a software engineer at work. We’ve just started a month long redesign of the core product, and we’re starting from scratch. My days are spent writing use cases and process diagrams, as well as learning about several other application frameworks.

Hopefully the next time you check this site, there will be real live pictures of the anklebiter 😉

Posted on 9 May 2003

Yup, that’s right. Still waiting…..

Work has slowed down a bit after a solid week of coding. We’ve been given the ok to redesign the system (it’s a mess of spaghetti code right now), so I spent the day thinking about data structures and the object that love them.

Saw this article on how parents without kids are happier on Salon today. I didn’t bother to click through and suffer through the ad to read the whole article, since I thought it basically stated the obvious. You don’t choose to have kids to have a happier marriage, and have more fun. Having a kid is probably one of the most selfless acts that a couple can do (short of becoming aid workers to a third world country). Think about it….you’re giving up a certain amount of freedom to focus your life wholly on a human being who is completely dependent on you (at least for a few years). That’s why there’s so many broken marriages and child abuse in this country. People don’t think through what it means to procreate. It’s not about you….it’s about the kid. The kid is not there for your entertainment or your convenience–in fact, it’s the reverse. Americans think they have to give birth and a have a family…they don’t think through it, they just do it, and they’re much worse off.

I know that fatherhood is going to be tough, and it’ll put a strain on my relationship with Jen sometimes. But that’s part of the game….it’s about turning up the volume on life to live it a bit more fully. It’s not about me…it’s about my kid…..

Posted on 6 May 2003

The anklebiter has yet to show his face…..

A few entertainment reviews today…I picked up two new albums, Pedro the Lion’s It’s Hard to Find a Friend and Ester Drang’s Inifinite Keys. It’s Hard… is David Bazan’s first album, and his best. A little less of a “book” than his later albums, but still great songwriting. Infinite Keys is a bit more interesting. I’d heard a few older Ester Drang songs, and they were, for the most part, instrumentals. This album is not the same. Good music, but the lead singer sounds a bit too much like the guy from Radiohead, and for some reason, I’m having a hard time getting past that. I’m not giving up on the album yet, though….

We also watched Death to Smoochy. I had heard good and bad about the movie, but I thought with Edward Norton, Robin Williams, and Danny Devito, it had to be worth watching. It was. Ed Norton does a fine job as an earnest, granola-crunching kid’s show host, and Robin Williams is bearable, since he plays a deranged, paranoid ex-kid’s show host. There were lots of good lines, and I’m quite sure that Williams didn’t have a written script (most of his lines are strings of expletives, but they work for his character).

In linux news, Slackware rocks. After a few additional downloads (the installation fits on a single CD, so there isn’t much _extra_ software installed) the system is running as good, if not better than, my old Mandrake distro. It’s definitely a very hand-on distro, but the extra work gives you a better, more customized system. The installation was very bare bones (no pretty screens like Mandrake or RedHat), but it did everything flawlessly. I was fortunate enough to already have my disks partitioned, so I just needed to format them, but I did toy around with cfdisk, the slightly friendlier version of fdisk, and it was easy to use. I’ve still got a 20GB drive sitting in the machine with nothing on it, so I’m considering downloading FreeBSB…..

Posted on 4 May 2003

Well, Slackware to the rescue. Thanks to some slightly more useful error messages during the install, I discovered that some of the machine’s RAM had gone bad. I removed the suspect RAM, and *poof*, Slackware 9 is installing. I’ve decided to give ReiserFS a whirl for the filesystems. Not like I’m running a 1TB drive or anything….

Posted on 3 May 2003

Well, in about two hours, the anklebiter’s due date will have passed. No news on that front at all….maybe tomorrow….

Quite a frustrating day. First, we lost internet connectivity at work. Not a big deal, since most of my work revolved around servers inside the network. But I soon found I really needed the Jakarta Group’s lame, half-completed documentation to complete my task. I tried in vain to carry on, but eventually I got frustrated and just left. Of course, to make matters worse, in a fit of frustration, I seemed to have managed to compromise my Yahoo mail with a lame piece of spam. Don’t ask. Fortunately, there’s little _important_ stuff in there, so it’s just a major inconvenience. Bleh.

Then let’s not forget the linux adventure. I’m working on^H^H^H^H^H^H^H just finished attempt number, oh, six or so on installing Gentoo. Something goes wrong at some phase of the process each time. Amazing. Plus I’ve managed to destroy my Windoze 2000 installation. Nice. I’m currently downloading Slackware (at this rate, I should have a library of most major distros). “Just install Mandrake 9 and get it over with!” you say. “HAH” I say. Neither 9 or 9.1 will even start the install process. Meh. Normally, at this point, I’d give up, but we’re installing a VPN at work next week, and I don’t want to miss an opportunity to work from home….

Posted on 2 May 2003