My parents have been married for 30 whole years! An unbelievable milestone in today’s world. Congratulations and Happy Anniversary!
Sunday April 27th, 2003
Saturday April 26th, 2003
Austin Traffic
Austin traffic is horrible. Today on the way home from San Antonio, the lower deck of IH-35 was closed, and traffic was backed up. The cause, another jumper was threatening to jump off the bridge into oncoming traffic. This time the jumper was at the bridge on the lower deck of IH-35 by St. David’s Hospital. The north and south bound lanes were all closed. Brianna and I were in the first row of cars that formed the closed section of IH-35 so we were able to drive by on the access road as everything was happening. This isn’t the first time that somebody has closed IH-35 by threatening to jump off a bridge into traffic.
My engineering brain just won’t let this go by without offering a solution. This one is free for use. I should probably make a drawing or two and send it to the mayer.
First, we take a large open bed truck, the kind the good-guys always jump into when their lives are threatened in the movies. If we can’t find a big open bed truck we can use a trash container truck, it doesn’t matter to me.
Two, we fill the truck with shredded foam. I understand that all municipalities are in a budget crisis now, so we will need some foam for cheap. Fortunately this is also easy to get. Brianna used to work for a foam supplier. This company would take large sheets of various types of foam rubber and die cut shapes from the sheets. The borders of the rubber (the same boarders you get when cutting biscuits from dough) would be thrown out and picked up by the trash company. Each day there was at least one and often two dumpsters full of foam scrap. This excess and unused foam waste could be shredded into small bits and used to fill the bed of the jumper rescue truck.
Three, we put the truck and the foam in its bed on stand-by near star flight. The next time the call goes out to close the IH-35 due to a jumper, the truck is dispatched to the overpass. Once the truck is in position the police officers would walk up to the jumper and push the jumper off the bridge and onto the foam in the truck. If the officers don’t want to push the jumper off the bridge, they could call me, or find a volunteer from the hundreds of cars now backed up on the highway to push the jumper off.
On Saturday night when returning from my parent’s house, MOPAC, the other major highway, was closed due to a wreck. Unfortunately there would be nobody to push off the bridge in these situations so my foam truck wouldn’t have helped.
Friday April 25th, 2003
Four Month Checkup
Hailey had her 4 month check up. She now weighs in at an impressive 12 lbs. 5 ounces, which is more than my bowling ball weight of choice. She received the requisite vaccinations and the go-ahead to begin solid food training.
Hailey accepted the solid food better than anticipated, showing us that she can eat a bowl of rice cereal and a 4 ounce bottle. Thank you very much.
We will be seeing a orthopedic specialist on May 6 for an additional checkup.
Fredd’s Birthday Fiesta
Mr. Mendler and Ms. Solis held a fiesta party at their San Antonio abode in honor of Mr. Mendler’s approaching birthday. Mr. Mendler made off with great times and good loot. Food, fun, and beverages were enjoyed by all. The responsible associates that we were all sleep over.
Tuesday April 22nd, 2003
Netscape 4.7!
As I sit here listening to mp3s on xmms Hailey is getting
fussy, then content, then fussy as the songs change. I have her laying
on my desk as I type, and she seems to like it, as long as a good song
is playing.
I restarted my access stats program and the logs are quite interesting. Since yesterday, 4.6% of the browsers accessing my site are Konqueror, which one of you is using KDE? and 21% are using Netscape. The problem is that 9.3% of those using Netscape are using version 4.7. If you are using Netscape 4.x, you should upgrade, ask me how if you don’t know.
Monday April 21st, 2003
Private Space Access?
John Carmack of id software fame has been leading an effort of space access enthusiasts to build a manned rocket ship. This craft will compete with others for the X-Prize a 10 million dollar purse awarded to the first crew to launch a man, recover the craft, and re-launch within two weeks. John Carmack has been documenting his expenditures and research efforts at the Armadillo Aerospace website.
Recently Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites fame has announced his contending craft for the X-Prize. Like all things Burt Rutan designs, this one is unique.
Is private space access the cash cow of the 21st century?
Sunday April 20th, 2003
First Easter
Today is Hailey’s first Easter. She is spending it in Thorndale, Texas with her Grandmothers, and Great Grandparents.
The Discovery Channel has a program called Houston Medical that is a real-life medical drama centered around the activities and patients at the Texas Medical Center, on Friday night the episode, on the Discovery Health Channel, chronicled a boy with severe epileptic seizures. His seizures required him to have brain surgery to remove the affected portion of his brain. The neurosurgeon was the doctor that Hailey saw a few weeks back. They also had the doctor that Hailey should be seeing not to long from now. The boy was being observed at the same epilepsy study center where she will be staying.
The program showed the boy’s trip to the hospital, the observance of his seizures, the implantation of the sterile electrode grid, and the removal of the affected portion of his brain.
They followed up with the boy to show his progress. His seizures had almost completely gone away and he was able to resume a more normal child’s lifestyle which included playing baseball and riding the regular school bus with his friends.
As of Friday night, Hailey is sleeping in her own bed. The monitor works well and we can hear her as soon as she wakes up. We don’t have to worry about rolling over onto her while we are sleeping. I have only gotten out of bed two or three times to go make sure she is still breathing.
Hailey may be teething. The drolling slobbering and willingness to gum anything near her mouth has started. This may mean that teeth are on there way.
Saturday April 12th, 2003
Finally an Update
[ 00:00 - 04:00 hrs ] After much absence, this site is now updated again. I have generated some new scripts that will help me keep things more up to date. You will notice that the articles are now different. Each one appears on its own page (as it moves off the index page) and you can link to it with the permanent link at the bottom of the article. The gallery section has been replaced by a photo album feature. The photo albums are generated automatically so it should be easier to keep new pictures on the site. The good news is there are a bunch of new pictures, the bad news is that the quality is limited to what the photo processor gave me on the photo disk.
News About Hailey On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday we were in Houston for an appointment with a Pediatric Neurological Surgeon, or children’s brain surgeon. We went to see this doctor because we needed him to refer us to his colleague, perhaps the last Pediatric Neurologist who specializes in Epilepsy in the state of Texas. The doctor we saw on Tuesday suggested putting Hailey on Phenobarbital to control the different types of seizures that he believes she is having.
This doctor’s office consulted with his colleague, and after three days, they have decided that Hailey should take part in his study. They should call us back within two weeks to arrange the time. This study will take place in Houston. During the study Hailey will stay in the hospital and will be monitored by CCTV and EEG to help determine what exactly is going on in her head.
Hailey has been on the Phenobarbital, the drug of choice for infants with her condition, for only two day, but she already seems like a different baby. It doesn’t seem like it is possible for a drug to work this fast at changing her behavior but, she spends more time playing and talking and less time fussing, than she did before.
As of Tuesday Hailey weighed 10 lbs. 6 oz
[ 12:00 hrs ] Brianna is off helping Tina with her dance squad, so I can think of nothing better to do than post a picture of Brianna with the Easter Bunny. This is from around 2001, I think.
Friday April 4th, 2003
MRI Images
Hailey has an appointment at the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston on Tuesday. We might be there for most of the week. Brianna has been busily gathering all the items we need to take with us including: MRI film, EEG results, and NICU discharge records. The MRI scans are black and white positives, maybe 16×20 inches in size. The film is heavy and thick. My scanner will scan film and I can get almost one frame into the film scanner. Each page has 20 of these frames on it, there are 10 pages in all.
