Bounding Overwatch

Selenium RC clears storedVars between testCases -- workaround

2011-09-12T11:15:00.001+12:00

I can't believe that this bug has been around since 2009 and still hasn't been fixed.

http://jira.openqa.org/browse/SRC-712">
Selenium RC doesn't recall stored vars from another testcase within a single testsuite

and a similar bug (but incorrect title) in: http://jira.openqa.org/browse/SEL-605">SEL 605

I couldn't get Krishnan Kannan's workaround with -userExtensions to work (because I'm blindly copy-pasting, not understanding at any depth how it's supposed to work), so am now using a custom edited selenium-server-2.0.5.jar until I can either get the user extension to work or it gets fixed upstream :-(

Mobile Internet... ACTIVATED

2010-12-14T02:41:00.002+13:00

I woke up because I was cold. And since I was up already I decided to setup our prepaid vodafone USB modem.

As I've noted elsewhere (although that was for a postpaid vodem), it just works. If it hasn't been setup before then it's necessary to select country, network and one of the vodafone networks. The right choices are New Zealand, Vodafone, Unrestricted.

When I first plugged it in I couldn't get an internet connection through it, but that's just because there was no credit in the prepaid account. When I first bought the modem I was told by someone at the vodafone call center that, even though it's prepaid, it would be necessary to pay the minimum $10/month continuously. The implication was that if I stopped paying for three months and then used it on the third month, I'd have to pay $20 for the intervening two months plus $10 for the current month.

Since this is just a backup internet connection for Sol to use for remote work if/when our DSL goes down (and for out-of-town trips), I kept it disconnected. It's been around 8 months since the last credit ran out and when I added $10 today, the internet connection went live immediately. So either the policy has changed (unlikely, I think), or the call center people were instructed to downplay the prepaid-ness of the modem.

The $10 is just for 100MB of data a month (Broadband Lite). We'll probably run through the 100MB in one day :-) but then I'd just top-up. I don't mind paying the higher perMB rates of BBLite (versus BBSurfer, $30/month for 512MB) since we're going to use this modem so rarely (fingers crossed, knock on head). Also, to switch to BBSurfer I'd either need to use a windows computer or find a version of Vodafone Mobile Connect that works with Ubuntu 10.10. The last three versions I've tried don't, so I'm not able to send an SMS from the modem to subscribe to BBSurfer, or read any SMS (if I were to subscribe the modem to myvodafone). I could get around those issues easily enough, if I cared enough. But I don't. So we'll just top-up because we won't be able to stay under 20MB of data a data in Auckland :-).

gnumeric generated dates to text

2010-01-22T15:23:00.002+13:00

I needed to generate test data. I was using gnumeric for this (makes copy pasting and test replacement easy for columns [same field]).

It was all going well until I needed dates to be not all the same. I could have generated random dates but I didn't need that, just needed dates to not be the same. So in the date column I set the first date to 01/01/1970 (new zealand format, mm/dd/yyyy), set the column to type date and then set the succeeding dates to be =[column][row]+1 (e.g., =A1+1).

The test data needed to be mm/dd/yyyy since that's what jmeter would push into an input field that would be interpreted as a date. But when I'd save to CSV gnumeric kept outputting the dates in ISO format. So I needed to munge the dates.

1. Copy the column
2. Paste-special to an empty column, select Values
3. Select the new column and Ctrl-H (search and replace)
4. set the "Search For" text to ^
5. set the "Replace By" text to '
6. click on the Range checkbox
7. click on Advanced and specify "Search Type" to be "Regular Expression"
8. click on OK.

Saving as CSV now has the dates in the format I specified in the spreadsheet. There might be a way to tell gnumeric to output dates in locale format when saving to CSV, but I couldn't find it. Fortunately, Paste special and regexp search and replace were available, making the workaround possible.

Davao-CDO-Camiguin 2004

2009-12-06T16:37:00.006+13:00

I've posted some of these pictures here before. But now they're on FB too.

Davao-CDO-Camiguin 2004

Also, John has some new videos:

Spider John:

Woof-woof:

Birdbook

2009-11-19T07:58:00.002+13:00

Andrew Zuckerman's BirdBook is incredible

I can't stand all-flash websites. I always make fun of any that I see. I make an exception for birdbook.

Too sweet

2009-11-05T08:43:00.001+13:00

mirrored from my facebook note of the same title

Last night I *loved* Alison Holst Decadent Delight Muesli.

Generous quantities of plump, moist apricots and flaked almonds; tossed in a delicious mix of oats and wheat germ; drizzled with honey and flavoured with essense of almond - toasted to perfection and then sealed to capture that just cooked flavour.

Today, it's too sweet. Good for eating by itself. Timmy liked it as a snack last night. But too sweet with milk. Even if I were to add oatmeal it'd be too sweet.

Maybe I'll try the less decadent flavours.

Huh, en-GB spelling even. And facebook's "Format your note" tips doesn't mention blockquote. But it works above.

Recent videos

2009-10-28T11:46:00.002+13:00

John Walking:

Eating Rice Rusks
We bought John some wheat rusks a few weeks ago. He didn't like that very much. A few days ago though, Sol found something he likes. Very convenient snack since Sol and Timmy like it too. We need to buy some more.

Hmmm, "Baby Mum-Mum Original, Premium Rice Rusks". And on the box there's a picture of an eager toddler looking up with the words "WANT-WANT" under him. The branding could be improved.

Three!
John says "Tee!". I often count to three (with emphasis on the three) when playing with John, e.g., when raising him high. Now, when I say "Threeeeeee!" he says "Teeeeee!"

2009-10-17T10:38:00.002+13:00

In a reddit comment on U.S. senators who voted for the rights of corporations against women raped by contractors/employees of those corporations

It is totally wrong to suggest that these 30 senators don't give a damn about battered women. They do. They do care. It's just that they care about corporations more. Especially the ones that paid to get them elected.

John's latest videos

2009-10-15T23:55:00.003+13:00

John inherits Timmy's old shades

Uh-oh

Healthcare experiences in New Zealand

2009-10-14T10:28:00.002+13:00

This post on our experiences with healthcare in New Zealand was originally on Facebook. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make it available to the world (access control is "Everyone", but that's just everyone on Facebook). Please click there for the full context (pictures and text).

Initially I'm posting the text here. I'll probably push the pictures up too, at some point. Or I might not.

===========

Experiences with Healthcare in NZ

After I posted a link, David asked me,

So how's healthcare down there tigs? Free everything and no pre-existing clause? :)

I started replying but gave up because it was getting long for a comment and FB would reject it. A reply in status would also be too long. Thus the note.

The following is just a narrative of our experiences, it's certainly not complete. I'm sure there are broad areas that we have absolutely no hinanawan about :-).

Not everything is covered by government healthcare. My eyeglasses, for instance, and (I think) dental care, need to be paid for individually or by insurance. There are government hospitals and private hospitals. If you don't like government healthcare because you don't want to wait for that elective surgery, you can go to a private hospital. You might even buy health insurance so that you can experience the private hospital experience (anecdotally, at certain levels of care, you get good wine with your meals :-).

Visits to a general practitioner are subsidized by the government (and, possibly, by the locality also). Currently the nominal cost of an adult's visit to a GP at our health center is around NZ$75 (exchange rate is currently around .70 USD per NZD, although it's been as low as around .52 in the past year or two, I think) for an adult. There are government discounts/subsidies. After those are factored in, I pay NZ$45 to see the doctor.

Timmy's and John's visits are NZ$15. Except when they go to see the doctor for vaccinations. Those are free and performed by nurses (they stick the needles in better than the doctors do :-).

So not all healthcare is *free*, but it's reasonably priced. The fee is a very affordable deductible and a speed bump against people abusing the front-end system (the GPs and nurses who will treat anything that doesn't need specialist care or equipment).

The local clinic has maybe 7-12 doctors on staff (not all at the same time) and the same number or maybe fewer nurses. Doctors visits (and nurse assistance, e.g., for vaccinations) are by appointment although they're always available for emergencies. The local clinic closes at night though, and on weekends. When it's closed emergency cases go to any of the nearby hospitals. There are three or four hospitals within 20 minutes drive. Doctors appointments may have a wait period of a week. You can see the same doctor every time, if you want, but your waits will probably be longer (particularly if the doctor goes on his month-long vacation). You can also just see any available doctor. Your health records are in a centralized system and any doctor in the Wellington area can see your records (no data about how private hospitals interface with that database, they probably have access).

Government healthcare isn't run for profit, so it will never reject you for treatment due to pre-existing conditions. You might need to *wait* for treatment, and the hospitals might not be as flashy as in the U.S. (and certainly there are fewer tests and MRIs and such) but you won't be refused treatment.

A friend at work has a son with leukemia (I think). He's been treated at the Wellington hospital cancer center. He needed some treatment that they couldn't do here, so he now goes to an Auckland cancer center. Next week (I think, I was chatting with my friend on the bus the other day), he goes to Auckland for his bone marrow transplant. If that's anything like sol's giving birth to John, it'll be all free. That he has to go to Auckland means that the family still needs to pay out some large sums, but they can cope since they don't need to pay for the healthcare itself, just the travel to Auckland and lodgings there for the parent who brings the child.

When Sol's mother was here, she had to go to the doctor for prescriptions for her vertigo and high blood pressure. We paid NZ$75 for the doctors visit and the meds were subsidized (in the same range as Philippine prices, *much* cheaper than in the U.S.).

There's a prescription refill service (Sol says it costs NZ$15 for a refill, and it can only be refilled once). So it's possible to get prescription refills cheaply while cutting doctors visits in half. I wouldn't be surprised (but have no data) if the number of refills can be higher than one for things like blood pressure, heart or diabetes meds which the patient is probably going to need for the rest of his life.

When Sol was pregnant with John, we were lucky that a midwife we met at the hospital lived near us. She became Sol's midwife. She'd come to the house on Saturdays to take Sol's blood pressure, weight, and fetal heartbeat monitoring (she brought the doppler device to the house, I got to hear John's heartbeat :-) etc. She arranged for the gestational diabetes tests and told sol what the results were. If there had been a problem, she'd have told sol what adjustments to make.

Sol had a choice of home birth, water birth (I think at the hospital, but I think also possible at home), or hospital birth. Since Sol had Timmy via caesarian section, we decided on the hospital option in case another one was required.

When Sol went into labor, we waited a long while because we (and the doctor) wanted to try for a normal birth first. After sol had tried for the normal birth with no success (the doctor and midwife were very impressed at her efforts), the doctors (with 2 and 3AM phone consultations with a specialist) decided (and we agreed) to go with the C-section.

Sol in the delivery room, being prepped for C-section

The view from the other side, doctors hard at work.

First picture of John

At the maternity ward, John slept beside Sol's bed.

Firefly

Just like Timmy, John had jaundice. Sol stayed a few extra days at the hospital because John had to undergo UV treatment for the jaundice and they were taking blood samples to monitor improvement.

The maternity ward was our least favorite part of the whole experience. We weren't in a private room (we were spoiled by St Lukes Hospital :-), so John would wake up when the other babies would cry. And there was one baby who cried a lot since he couldn't feed. He figured it out after a while, but it was very stressful the first few days.

They wouldn't let me stay in the hospital overnight, so I couldn't help Sol with picking up John when he needed to be fed at night. That was hard for Sol since she was recovering from the C-section. The nurses and doctors were very good though. And the nurses, particularly, were a huge help to Sol. She'd press the button, they'd come over and help with the baby (for feeding or diaper change).

So it's not all roses. On the other hand, I didn't have to pay multiples of my monthly salary for the C-section (at St Lukes, we paid 3x my monthly salary, I think, and that was with the doctor's fee discounted by half!).

There's also a compulsory (for workers) accident compensation system (www.acc.co.nz). So anyone who has an accident at a workplace is going to get compensation. You don't even have to be working there. We were confused when we got an ACC letter one day. Apparently someone had reported Timmy's accident at school (when he cut his eyelid) and so we were entitled to refunds for any health care costs.

As it happened, Timmy had just the one NZ$15 doctor's visit when the doctor applied glue to the wound. We didn't bother to claim at the ACC. We're hoping to avoid future dealings with the ACC , but if I get carpal tunnel syndrome or similar, I know who to go to. A friend of ours (and his wife) got physical therapy treatments via the ACC. There might also be some situations when eyeglass prescriptions would be refunded by the ACC, but I haven't looked closely enough at that. Maybe with my next lens purchase.

No, stay in your country

2009-10-04T08:38:00.003+13:00

Some anti-republican wants nutjob rabid republicans out of the U.S.A.

No, keep them. Work out your differences in your own country, peacefully if you can, but any which way otherwise, just keep them away from us. Don't send them to Iraq. You've done enough damage there. Sending them to Iraq would make you (non-nutjob republicans, and non-republicans) just as bad as the nutjobs. It's not your country. Your country is right there. Stay home, work out your problems. Don't involve us in your stupidities and hate. We have enough of that and we're working out *our* problems -- and sometimes, not, but this is *our* world out here. You stay in yours.

John's first steps

2009-10-04T00:33:00.003+13:00

John took his first steps today. This was also (as far as I know) his first long period of standing on his own.

There's also some contact of John's teeth with Timmy's forehead at the end :-).

The long period of standing was because he was watching TV (behind Sol).

Uncertainty makes me say No

2009-10-03T13:20:00.003+13:00

A lady knocked on our door today. She said, "Hi, I'm fundraising for X charity, are you interested?"

I said no.

I would have been open to giving a certain amount without any hesitation at all (say, NZ$10-15, larger amounts I'd have to think about and even larger amounts I'd have to talk to sol about :-). Unfortunately, her question was too open ended. We have two children, one was in the living room at the time (being angelic just then, but things change) and I'm babysitting a dist-upgrade on one laptop just now. There are house chores I haven't done yet.

So I said no, because I didn't know what the range of the donation would be, I didn't know how much time I'd have to spend chatting with her and I didn't know whether I'd have to *think* about anything (to begin with, how much to give). If she'd said,

"Hi, I'm fundraising for X charity, we're selling these 15 dollar T-shirts." Or these 5 dollar chocolates, or even these 2 dollar raffle tickets (*even* because I avoid games that involve pure randomness), I would have said yes immediately.

Money is tight, but time is far tighter, and frankly, I don't have any brains left to use on the weekends. Sometimes, I run out of brains on Thursday.

John saying "Stay!"

2009-10-02T12:12:00.000+13:00

John says "Stay!" a lot lately. He's learned it from us, since we say it to him a lot in the imperative when we're changing his nappies or clothes. He's very wriggly. And strong.

Vodafone fail

2009-09-27T09:17:00.006+13:00

Vodafone need to disable logging to the page. They're leaking information (hostname, port, that they're using weblogic). I don't know if that's exploitable... but even if it isn't yet, it might be sometime.

I was going to add credit so my BestMates rate wouldn't expire. Maybe I'll just let it expire if they won't let me pay for it. This has happened before. I also pay for Sol's and her sister's prepay accounts and I had a similar problem with trying to pay once before.

Huh, I gave up on posting to their forums since it requires logging in. And when I tried to "contact by email", after I typed in the message (just a link to her and some short text suggesting they turn off logging to the page) and gave them my email address, the next page was a registration page. I'm already registered. I don't want to register again. I don't want to login. Damn. I think it might be time to switch to 2-degrees. And if I do, we'll switch as a family.

The other time this happened (weblogic errors on the top-up page) I called the 777 support number and was confronted with a call tree. I don't like call trees. When I pressed zero though, I was informed that talking to an operator would be pay-per-minute. I'm even more averse to paying for support. So I cancelled the call immediately.

Aha, I could probably click on the "Top-up online now" link and prepay with no problems. But that requires registering the credit card with them. I don't want to do that either. I'm a Luddite in many ways. I want to type in the card info everytime. It probably doesn't help security any, but I feel better about Vodafone (or any other company that uses my credit card) having one less place it stores my credit card info. It's bad enough that they actually take the credit card information instead of having the credit card company and not storing the credit card information locally.

[Update]
top-up does finally succeed a few hours later. But this isn't about eventually topping-up (if I forget to try on the same day, BestMates *will* expire and then I might cancel it because I don't really need it anymore), it's about that logging error. Don't log to the browser in production pages.

Timmy takes pictures

2009-09-06T22:41:00.003+12:00

An album of pictures Timmy has taken. There are more, I'll add as I find them, moving backward through our on-disk archive of pictures

Waiting in Acapulco

2009-08-30T22:24:00.003+12:00

Sol thought out loud that it would be nice to bring the children to Disneyland. And then she said it's too bad we couldn't go to the one in California, or the one in Florida since I wouldn't go with them.

I was being too linear (and insensitive) when I replied that they could go to Disneyland and I'd wait for them in Acapulco. As much as I'd love to visit the U.S. and see friends and beloved, I won't do it. Until the U.S. pays reparations to Iraq (and preferably Afghanistan) for the deaths it's caused, I will leave the U.S. alone with its iniquity and wait (probably beyond death) for it to receive what it deserves. And as a practical matter, the U.S. never pays reparations, because it can do no wrogn. And anyone who says otherwise gets shot.

There is also the simple (and perhaps irrational and innumerate [because I'm an inconsequential little fish and it's not like anyone would actually care what I think, but I ignore the statistics and worry anyway]) fear that if I do visit the U.S., if anyone at immigration or customs googles my name they might find their way to this blog and subject me to a cavity search and other indignities. And frankly, if I'm on my way to american gaol (no matter how temporary, even if it's only a small holding cell at an airport), I'm going to fight until somebody dies (and the firepower curve being what it is, that's probably me). So I'm just not going to the U.S. I've got children to raise to manhood, and my children are dearer to me than anyone in the U.S.

But sol wasn't serious. American Disneyland isn't a big deal. And maybe the kids won't grow up wanting to go there anyway. For preference, I'd rather we visit, e.g.,

The Okinawa Aquarium

or maybe travel through India, Nepal, Bhutan. We'd love to go through Morocco, maybe Egypt (I'd rather not visit Israel until the Palestinians have a state). Spain, France, Italy, Greece would be good (but I'm just dreaming online here, I don't know that we'd be able to afford those :-).

I bet the whole family would love to visit Acapulco :-). Even if, after so many years in New Zealand, my intestinal flora will no longer be strong enough to fight off Montezuma's revenge.

We're certainly going to visit only a small fraction of those places. But visiting any at all will be the fulfillment of dreams I never thought could be fulfilled, just two years ago.

Diving at CamiguinAction in Jun 2007

2009-08-30T20:50:00.003+12:00

Sol and I (and Timmy) went to Cagayan de Oro and Camiguin in June 2007. This was for Timmy's baptism, and also a vacation.

Vacation pictures are at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31726&id=1134594770&l=8201db0079

Without a sense of irony

2009-08-06T08:39:00.003+12:00

Israel is forcing arabs out of their homes, homes they've occupied for decades, to make way for new apartments for jews only

This is Israeli apartheid. Halfway to fulfilling my prediction that eventually they're going to have to kill off all the arabs. For now, all they're doing is killing a few thousand here, a few thousand there, keeping a few tens of thousands of arabs in jail and torturing a few thousand of them.

Personally, I won't have anything to do with anything Israeli. I won't buy their products, I won't go there, and I'll do all I can to convince people who want to make the pilgrimage not to do it. That won't do much good, people who want to do the pilgrimage will go anyway, regardless of the evil they support which they willfully misunderstand, but I'll say it anyway.

Are there Israelis they are creating? No doubt, maybe even a large majority. But that doesn't matter. A complete boycott is what I'm for. No exceptions. The arabs are going to be starved of food, space, life and hope anyway, regardless of how well we discriminate between good and bad Israeli products.

This is America

2009-07-14T20:30:00.001+12:00

http://www.democrats.com/node/19855

Return on assets

2009-07-04T21:18:00.003+12:00

This is the second article I've seen recently strongly suggesting that bank performance should be measured on return on assets rather than return on equity.

I don't understand finance and accounting enough to know what's what, but it sounds good :-).

pulpified

2009-06-25T12:31:00.002+12:00

Dilawar was chained by his wrists to the ceiling of his cell for four days and brutally beaten by Army interrogators on his legs for hours on end to the point where he could no longer bend them. He died on Dec. 10, 2002.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, an Air Force medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Dilawar, said Dilawar’s leg was pummeled so badly that the” tissue was falling apart and had basically been pulpified.”

....

In fact, as the New York Times reported in May 2005, when Dilawar was murdered, “most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.”

American foreign policy. Not merely ugly; actively evil.

One week off

2009-06-21T20:08:00.003+12:00

Sol and I are taking the week off from work. This is mostly to recover from stress. We'd like to drive around the Wellington area too, if the weather is good. Options are Kapiti, the Wairarapa (unlikely, since John is still small), parts of the Hutt valley.

We'll probably mostly just be resting at home though. I've been sick since Monday with a sore throat and tonsillitis, and some flu-like symptoms. The tonsillitis is finally almost gone (should be gone tomorrow). I'm still exhausted, despite the weekend, so the week off is going to be great for recharging.

I've got some code I'd like to work on (will benefit work, but not something we could bill to a client), and there are some things I'd love to do for work with no pressure to enter them in my timesheet :-). I'll only be working/playing online around 4 hours a day though, probably. I've got to be better about taking care of John since Sol does such a heroic job taking care of him when I'm not around, and still she's able to work 4 hours a week. I don't know how she does it, frankly. And we're all very lucky that she's so much more healthy and sturdy than I am.

This is Israel

2009-06-20T13:16:00.001+12:00

This is Israel

Yes, but

2009-06-01T12:50:00.002+12:00

What are "Perks" and "Choke"?

I'm too uncaring to look it up though. This post entirely rhetorical.

I don't know what a hipster is either. And I think I might care less. But I'm not sure. I'd know for sure... if I knew what a hipster was. Probably some sort of dumb-ass.

Timmy and John

2009-05-29T19:49:00.003+12:00

Recent videos of John and Timmy, pasted together without any editing at all :-).

Timmy loves this

2009-04-12T09:18:00.003+12:00

I saw a video of the Do Re Mi song, with dancing performed at the Antwerp central station. I showed it to Timmy and he loves it. He wants it played over and over :-).

For men this means no bachelor party, tuxedo, strippers or Best Man.

2009-03-29T07:43:00.002+13:00

On Shrink Talk there's a section that says "3) There is far too much emphasis on 'weddings' as opposed to 'marriages.'".

As hit happens, I had no bachelor party, no tux, no strippers and no Best Man. And I liked it that way :-).

Sol is driving

2009-03-23T15:25:00.002+13:00

Sol passed her practical driving test last Wednesday. Before that, she got a perfect score in the theory test. I'm very proud that she passed her practical test on the first try. Not everyone does, in NZ, and she wasn't an experienced driver when she came to NZ. In the Philippines she learned just enough to get a license, and then she didn't use her license for years.

She took a lot of driving lessons here though (expensive, but worthwhile), and she practiced with a good friend as her supervisor, and every day with her sister, when her sister was here.

Since she can now drive legally, she went shopping with Timmy twice last week, and she's gone to pick him up at daycare today. I just bought a carseat for John, too. So starting tomorrow, she'll be picking up Timmy at school and I'll no longer need to leave work early to pick Timmy up. Unfortunately, this will entail some disruption in John's sleep schedule. She needs to get him into his car seat and he'll accompany her to pick up Timmy. That'll take a week or two of adjustment, but I'm sure it'll all work out.

I'm relieved that I'll finally be able to spend more time at the office. I *do* work at home after bringing Timmy home from daycare, but this is no time to seem to be slacking at work. And while no one at work has said that, New Zealand work culture being so supportive of family I'm very glad we moved here, I'd rather head off any such thoughts than deal with them when they come up.

forgot to take out the garbage

2009-03-10T14:05:00.002+13:00

Monday is garbage collection day here and I forgot to take out the garbage. So we've got last week's garbage sitting in the back.

I didn't take out the garbage because I was exhausted and went to sleep at the same time as I was putting Timmy to sleep on Sunday night. I was up much of the night anyway, making sure he was Ok, so I didn't wake up early on Monday. The garbage truck goes by close to noon, so I could have put the garbage out. But I was very busy chasing Timmy around and trying to get some work done, and I just completely forgot that it was garbage day. I hadn't even checked my email or SMS messages over the weekend, so I missed paying the rent on Saturday. That's no big deal, it's due on Monday, and I sent it in on Monday afternoon, but I almost missed a whole day there.

It's all Timmy's fault :-). He's had a fever since thursday. No vomiting or diarrhea this time (well, wet stool that runs out of his diaper, but only once or twice a day). Last week I had two all-nighters trying to get some critical work done. I finally got it deployed on the weekend. But with the all-nighters, and the bad sleep because of Timmy being uncomfortable at night and having to take his paracetamol at the right time, and comforting him when he's uncomfortable but can't take his paracetamol yet, well, things got hectic.

I brought him to the doctor on Sunday, but they all do the same thing here. On the first visit to the doctor (typically 2-3 days after the first fever), they'll prescribe paracetamol and send him home for observation and have him seen by his GP two days later. That's fine, since it's often a virus that'll go away by itself after a few days. If it's something that antibiotics can handle, they don't prescribe the antibiotics because usually it'll go away in 5 or 6 days anyway, and they're minimizing the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

So it's all very reasonable, but it sure is putting me under quite a bit of pressure. I take sick leave when I'm sick and when Sol is sick, and when either of the kids is sick. I don't want to be taking that much sick leave since it could put my job in danger. Well, not really, Catalyst IT is a really great place to work and they're understanding about family and personal problems. But I do take my work seriously and in the current economic climate I want to be optimizing my chances of doing well until the recovery. Sick days don't help, and *5* sick days because the doctors won't prescribe antibiotics or take blood tests to see if it's something antibiotics would help, are a big problem.

Timmy has been very needy too, wanting to be carried all the time. That's normal, given the fever and body aches he must be having. But carrying him *does* take a toll on an older father :-).

We've got his doctor's appointment tomorrow. I hope he's given a clean bill of health so he can go to school on Thursday and I can go to work.

On another note: I've been leaving work early and working a few hours at home this last few weeks so that I can pick up Timmy at school. Sol is taking driving lessons and will be taking her practical driving exam next Wednesday. I hope she passes on the first try. If not, well, I hope she passes on the *second* try. When she passes her driving exam, she'll be able to pick up Timmy in the car and I won't need to leave work early. I actually *like* leaving early and picking him up and working two or three hours at home, but again, I need to be doing as well as possible at work, and while Catalyst is, again, understanding about the need to leave early, I'd rather not rely on that but instead build an image for being reliable and *being*present*at*work*.

facebook slow

2009-02-22T12:55:00.002+13:00

I have a facebook account. I don't do much with it. It's really just a placeholder so that people can contact me if they know enough to find me. I don't make it easy for people who don't know my secret nick (i.e., the one I'm posting this under on blogger) since my real name doesn't appear there at all.

So facebook isn't important. I'm resisting posting pictures there mainly because I'm comfortable with photobucket and blogger, and partly because I don't care enough to figure out how to do things on facebook.

Today though, I'm trying to add a friend and comment on a picture of me that someone else posted, and it's taking forever. Well, it's been thirty minutes and the facebook tab is still going.

Likely it's some batch job running around now (noon New Zealand time). Of course facebook is optimized for read (with some massive caching). And writes are going to be many times slower than reads anyway. But there must be some batch updates running. There's no reason adding a friend or commenting on a pic would take more than an hour to complete :-). Well, it's been 30 minutes so far. If it's not done in an hour I'll give up and maybe try again another time. If I remember.

(Hola mylene, *of*course* i'll remember :-).

John Laughing

2009-02-11T01:11:00.000+13:00

John Christian is growing very quickly. He sleeps really well at night as well as in the daytime. He eats a lot, and he's very alert and observant now.

He's also very ticklish. Got it from me, I think.

Still

2009-01-31T08:48:00.001+13:00

Charles Krauthammer, still the asshole he ever was

Tummy bug

2009-01-30T10:52:00.003+13:00

Timmy started daycare on Monday. He loves it there. On Wednesday night though he didn't have a good appetite, he had liquid diarrhea and vomited out both his dinner and his bedtime milk. Since these were different occasions, he had four baths and changes of pajamas that night (the first one was the regular bath and change for bedtime).

I've taken Thursday and Friday off to stay home with Timmy. I take care of Timmy and Sol takes care of John. We don't swap because we want to have Timmy get rid of whatever the bug was and we want to avoid having John get the bug. So there'll be no cross-kissing or hugging until at least tomorrow (Saturday). Timmy will go back to daycare on Monday.

Timmy is slowly recovering. He hasn't had any further diarrhea or vomiting, but he's not as active as usual. Some of that is because he's eating less and avoiding his milk. We convince him to have some milk anyway, but he's down to about a third of his normal milk intake. Some of that is just him avoiding the milk because he associates it with the vomiting. A few more days of lower milk intake with no vomiting should see him let go of the association.

As it happens, Sol's mother and sister were due to leave for Manila on Thursday morning. So the vomiting and diarrhea came at just the wrogn time for them, when they were already working through the idea of missing Timmy and John. There was no slack in their visas though, since both visas were to expire today.

We hope to see Sol's sister back in a month or two, and perhaps her mother in 9 months or so.

Hmmm, my stomach is a bit unstable too. Not to the point of diarrhea or vomiting though, so I might have a touch of what Timmy has, but my body is fighting it off.

John Christian Quimpo

2009-01-22T23:00:00.006+13:00

I have videos of John Christian, and a particularly great clip of Timmy with John, but I don't have the time to edit the videos into shape just yet. It doesn't help that kino on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) is ridiculously unstable (and PulseAudio makes it worse).

I just got around to selecting a bunch of John Christian's pictures, from when he was born to just a few days ago. I've pushed those up to Photobucket and now here they are:

In the operating room

In the maternity ward, waiting to go home. Sol and John had to stay an extra two days because John had jaundice and had to have ultraviolet light treatment

And finally home. He still had a little jaundice, so we had him in the sun for ten minutes or so every day. Fortunately, unlike at Sta Mesa, we have sun right in the bedroom and in the living room.

We bought John a bassinet. Sol has since removed a lot of the cushions and other material since they might contribute to SIDS, so now it's just the cane bassinet and the main oval cushion and a flannel sheet. That second picture is a huge favorite of mine.

Timmy loves playing with John. He's just lent John his small bear

John, of course, is oblivious. All he wants to do his eat, sleep and poop. All of which he does A LOT.

John has gained a lot of weight by Christmas. He's a bit less than 1.5 months here and he laughs when mamang babbles at him.

A week or two later he's almost twice his birth weight and he pretty much completely fills his bassinet. We have a swing/rocker for him, and he definitely fills that up completely too. We thought he'd use that swing for six months.

I expect toria will appreciate the way those toes have personalities of their own.

He laughs when tickled, and (in the bottom pictures), he loves his bath, so he feels really good and laughs from pure pleasure after a bath. At the bottom there, Timmy loves his baths too, but for some reason he chose to look cute and pensive in his monkey bathrobe.

Timmy games

2009-01-20T05:39:00.002+13:00

Timmy is 26 months old and he loves copying what sol and I (and my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law) do. The ladies all love watching cooking shows on Food TV, so Timmy also loves to "cook". He plays pretend cooking in the walk-in cupboard, where the pots and pans are kept (as are flour, salt, cookies, canned goods, honey and spices, all kept on shelves he can't reach).

Since I'm always on the computer when at home (either just reading, or working remote, he also likes sitting at a computer and typing. He's not content just to play with his Fisher-Price Laughtop now (although he really loved to play with it a few months ago and learned his alphabet with it).

When I (or sol, or my sister-in-law) am at the computer, he'll walk over and force his head under my arm. Once he's got his head in the door, so to speak, he'll then climb up on the chair and eventually onto my lap.

Usually I can dissuade him when I'm working, but when it's time for a pause, or when it's time for a cuddle we play some flash games. Before I thought of flash games, I'd just click on a folder of family pictures and videos and either set the pictures to display in slideshow mode, or have the videos play one after another. That still works, but now he wants to interact with the computer more, so we play flash games.

He really likes the Fisher-Price ABC Zoo game. He sings along to the alphabet song intro and then likes pressing keys and having the corresponding animals come up and make their signature sounds. I think he'll tire of it soon though since there's only one set of animals, so pressing a letter always results in the same animal coming up.

Fisher-Price also have the Animal Sounds game. The URL is bogus though, it's only accessible via javascript from: here. Oh, I could probably read the source of that page and figure out how to get to the game directly, but I don't care enough to do that. I'll just say it's a stupidity to have games or other resources that are accessibly only through javascript. Timmy doesn't like this game as much as the alphabet zoo. But maybe he'll grow into it.

Orisinal has some incredibly pretty flash games for kids. But Timmy can't play any of them yet since they're all mouse oriented and I bought a full size mouse. I should have bought a mini-size mouse (they were discounted at Dick Smith's Electronics when I bought the full size mouse at a second hand store, so I didn't save much on the mouse), so that it would be easier for Timmy to hold. Well, my old laptop is sitting idle right now since I've switched to an oler but faster widescreen desktop-replacement laptop. If I can find a reasonable place to put it, maybe I'll let timmy use the old one with an external keyboard and mouse so he doesn't touch the laptop directly.

Timmy will enjoy playing the Orisinal games when he learns how to use a mouse and gains some more manual dexterity, focus and attention-span. That's probably another two years away.

The Jackson Pollock flash app is probably just right for him now though, and he'll enjoy playing it since it doesn't take any skill at all, just moving the mouse and random clicking. That'll get him to learn how to control the mouse a bit, which may make playing Orisinal come around earlier than I think :-).

Having him sitting on my lap pressing letter keys to have the letters and corresponding animals come up is very restful and enjoyable. He's not hard to distract away from the games for now. I hope that continues. I doubt it though. I'm sure it'll get more and more difficult to pry him away from a computer as he grows older :-).

Christmas cheesecake

2008-12-28T18:50:00.002+13:00

Much of this was Christmas dinner. Sol made strawberry cheesecake, there was a lovely pork roast and more cheesecake. The previous day we had lunch with friends, barbecue, blueberry cheesecake and paella with scallops.

At the end, that's timmy singing Jingle bells, except only the lyrics he knows, which is pretty much two words. And "Hey!" So... three words. In the scene just before Jingle bells, Timmy had grabbed mamang's cheesecake, so it was very good of him to share some of it with her :-).

Today we ran out of cheesecake and went to the grocery to buy the makings. Tomorrow, there'll be more cheesecake, but probably no more cheesecake videos.

Timmy dancing

2008-11-29T13:47:00.002+13:00

At around 1:34 he's saying "guitar". It took me a while to figure out what he was saying. It became clear one bedtime when he went through his list of musical instruments while pretending to be playing them. Drawing a finger across his hand is "guitar" :-)

One birthday, and another

2008-11-04T21:45:00.005+13:00

It was Timmy's birthday last Sunday, 2 Nov. Last year we had his birthday in Manila.

This year, we're in Wellington. It was a merienda birthday, and we had it in the house, which is pretty small, so we didn't invite a lot of people. We were also sufficiently busy having fun that we forgot to take more pictures and videos :-).

There's a video of the important part though.

Sol worked very hard on Saturday and Sunday, cooking and preparing everything. I did what I could to help, but it was trivial compared to how much work she and her mother put into the birthday.

I think all that standing and cooking precipitated the start of her labor, at around 2:30AM on Monday. We called Julius and he, very graciously, drove us to the hospital at 4:30AM. Sol wanted to try for a natural birth, and that's the preference of NZ doctors too, so despite Sol's previous caesarian section with Timmy, we spend 24 hours trying for the natural birth. After everything being tried, and with sol pushing heroically but not enough progress being made, a c-section was finally performed and John Christian was born at 4:48AM on Tuesday, the 4th.

Sol's mother suggests that we should celebrate the birthdays of the two boys together, on the 3rd of November :-).

John Christian making his first appearance

John Christian with Sol

And... resting

Timmy singing

2008-10-22T20:04:00.001+13:00

Timmy has taken up singing big-time.

Oh, No! Little Einsteins on DVD

2008-10-07T17:17:00.002+13:00

After publishing First Amazon Purchase, I realized that Timmy's favorite TV shows are probably available on DVD too. So I searched for "Little Einsteins DVD" on Amazon. Unfortunately, all the DVDs there are Region 1 only. Searching on .co.nz sites finds the same DVDs. I won't buy any yet. He gets a healthy twice daily dose (once in the morning, and once in the afternoon, fortunately, neither conflicts with naptime) of Little Einsteins now, over SkyTV.

He does love that show though, he now says "Oh no!" incessantly, because of it, he sings the theme song when the show is on, and repeats much else that he hears there (Oh, no! it's too high!). We may buy the DVDs at some point. But not soon. Maybe a year or a year and a half after John Christian comes into the world.

First amazon purchase

2008-10-07T16:58:00.002+13:00

I ordered a few books and a CD from Amazon today. That's the first Amazon order I've ever made. Likely it won't be the last. For technical books, particularly, not everything is connyveniently available in New Zealand, and even with shipping, Amazon is often still less expensive than buying locally.

The reason I ordered from Amazon is because we borrowed a book from the library that Timmy really likes. It's mainly because of that book (Jo Moon's "Making Letters") that, at 23 months, Timmy has now memorized all of the alphabet. Well, we've shown him lots of letter books, so he's been learning the alphabet for months now. And certainly he learned a lot of the letters from playing with his Laughtop. But "Making Letters" completed the process, and he loves reading it every night.

It was time to return the book to the library, so we needed our own copy.

We also bought other books in the series (Making Numbers and Making Shapes).

Since I was ordering from Amazon already, I went ahead and ordered a Spring book, and sol wanted a CD by Mary-Kathryn. There were several available at Amazon (and in fact, Perfect Gift wasn't in stock), but I didn't want to grab them all. So I selected one, and if Sol likes it, we'll grab the others.

sick today

2008-09-05T13:16:00.002+12:00

I was cold and shivering last night, up to around 10AM. I thought I'd let it take its course, and get to the office in the afternoon. I can't though since I've got some mild vertigo.

Last night was probably due to walking up the hill in the cold (it was raining too, but just mild showers and I bought a small umbrella that, surprisingly, didn't break or blow away in the Wellington wind :-). And then, when I got home, well, I have a bug at work that's taken forever to figure out because the test cycle is just so long. So I worked on that til around 2:30AM. It seems to be an alfresco+lucene bug, and my various workarounds are not working. So when I went to bed it was unresolved, and I was cold and exhausted.

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy myself during the bug hunt, but I still need to solve the problem. I'll probably be working on that around 4 hours a day over the weekend. But not today or tonight. Need to rest up.

Well, don't do that then

2008-08-19T20:15:00.002+12:00

Well, don't go there then.

I certainly won't, anyway. Of those who do go anyway, likely only a few will experience this. But they did make the choice to go to the U.S. of Atrocity. I wonder whether they'll learn how bad an idea that was, or just decide it was all a mistake.

Timmy nighttime ritual

2008-08-18T22:09:00.004+12:00

We read to timmy at night, before he has his milk and goes to sleep. And we always play his nighttime music. This time, he was excited by the camera and we didn't get to read as much as we usually do since he kept playing to the camera.

The music is from Rita Baloche's, Bless My Little Boy. It's great lullaby music. Some songs have christian themes, others don't. Overall, a great gift to mothers of sons, highly recommended.

Well, if the sons are boys. I don't think it would have the desired effect if the sons are teenagers or older :-).

Timmy slide

2008-08-18T22:07:00.002+12:00

One of those days was sunny, and the other, uhhh, haily. On the sunny day (Saturday, I think), we went down to the mall. Along the way we passed by the playground and, among other things, timmy went on the slide.

Timmy icecream

2008-08-18T22:00:00.001+12:00

Timmy had ice cream that weekend. With bananas. Bananas are his favorite food, and now ice cream is too.

Hail

2008-08-18T21:54:00.002+12:00

We had hail and sort-of-snow two weeks ago. I forget which day it was, but it was either the 9th or the 10th of August. I think it was the 10th, Sunday.

Sol, Mamang and Timmy were very excited since it was their first experience with snow. Timmy didn't really know what the big deal was, but he was excited because the rest of us were.

As if I needed another reason

2008-08-14T07:58:00.003+12:00

Yet another reason to never visit the United States of Assholes. Sick of cancer, spine fractured, allowed to die in pain because he couldn't stand in line for painkillers. And no one will be punished, because this is policy now, practically, in U.S. immigration..

Shining city upon a hill. A beacon of arrogance, and selfishness. Torturing and killing civilians. And proud of it.

No direct debit

2008-08-12T19:54:00.003+12:00

I received quite the shocking bill today. The telco bill for landline and broadband arrived and it was for NZ$285. That's about 3 months of bills plus late charges. I *knew* that I'd set up direct debit with the telco. And when I looked at my bank statements (online), there were payments to the telco for two months, April and May (which were for March and April respectively). No payments in Jun or July though.

I called the telco and they have no record of direct debit authorization though. Now, I have direct debit with the power company, and with the satellite TV company, but not with the telco, apparently. I think they lost my direct debit authorization. I know I've sent it to them. But it's a big company. Things get lost. I don't care too much about it. I've just paid the bill and will now remember to pay the bill every month :-).

In case I forget, I've got a repeating reminder that'll email me of the payment schedule :-).

Vanity Plates

2008-08-09T15:24:00.003+12:00

I know what I want my vanity plate to be, when I get a vanity plate (which is likely to be never, but it doesn't hurt to broadcast my intent early).

DUM845

I think only 6 letters/digits are allowed in New Zealand. If 7 are allowed, then of course, DUM8455 :-).

Heh, I think DUM845 is actually a regular plate number, so if it isn't already taken, maybe I can request it and not pay a premium for the vanity plate.

What esprit de corp? Honor? what's that?

2008-08-01T20:00:00.003+12:00

A female soldier is raped, beaten, burned, and shot. The U.S. army calls it suicide.

Where is your honor now? What kind of army would try to hide a crime like this? And if they hide rape and murder of their own, how many rapes and murders are they responsible for EVERY DAY, that will never be prosecuted?

America, a nation of ignorant ostriches, paying taxes through the nose so that its military can brutalize millions. And giving away billions, so that its allies can brutalize *their* millions.

Borrowing through the nose to kill women and children

2008-07-26T09:08:00.002+12:00

The United States of Atrocity borrows billions of dollars so that they can kill 78 civilians, many of them women and children. The actual civilian death toll is certainly higher than this, women and children are counted as civilians, any adult or teenage males are probably counted as fighters, regardless of the truth.

Well, maybe the dead are lucky since they weren't tortured.

Credit Card

2008-07-19T20:32:00.002+12:00

After 15 years without a credit card (I swore off them since I had so much trouble managing them well, when I had them), I finally got one recently. This time around, I intend to use it only for its intended purposes, i.e.,

to create a good credit history (we'll want to buy a house eventually, perhaps 5 years from now, or earlier, if the market tanks and prices become reasonable).

to make our checking account more easily managed (costs which can be paid online are to be paid via checking, costs which are paid at stores are paid via credit card, so that checking account balances don't need to be kept higher than some prudent level).

Our cash flow (and need for "stuff", and mutual spending conservatism) is such, so far, that we should not actually need to access any credit lines, so we should be fine with keeping the credit card fully paid every billing period.

On the other hand, as "The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley", we'll be keeping a hard eye on that credit card, and if the cash discipline starts to slip, we're likely to cancel it with extreme prejudice :-).

torturing 10 year olds

2008-07-04T22:19:00.001+12:00

wow

they're certainly blazing a trail for the United States of Atrocity to follow. And follow, the americans do.

Off today

2008-07-01T11:36:00.003+12:00

I took the day off today because last night and this morning I had some severe chills. The chills wouldn't go away despite being under 2 layers of covers and warm clothes, plus a heater in the room.

I thought it was just from working on code in the unheated living room (the heater cuts off at 8:30PM, and I was up working till around 1:30AM), but after consulting my memories, I'm pretty sure that's not the real reason.

First a diversion, for context.

Now that doesn't really have much to do about anything, except I had to put them somewhere :-).

Back to context, on Saturday (June 28), we went to the early morning market at Porirua's Cobham Court. This was an exploratory trip, so Timmy and my mother-in-law stayed home while sol and I left at 7:15 (15-20 minute walk to the bus stop) to take the 7:45 bus to Porirua.

We had lots of fun, and, with fruit and vegetables at around half to three-quarters the price at the grocery, an opportunity to save quite a bit of money.

Given that we took the bus though, and in future my mother-in-law and timmy will be along, going there won't be so much about savings (although there'll be some of that) as about enjoying the weekend, buying fresh fruit, vegetables and fish, and then maybe taking a tour of the mall stores too.

Which brings me to the fish:

We bought quite a lot of fish there too, and squid, and crabs and shells that were like mussels.

When we got home we feasted on the crabs and shells (except timmy, of course, who isn't allowed for shellfish yet, but he didn't know what he was missing :-). We had crabs and shells left over, so for Monday dinner my mother-in-law reused them in a gata (coconut milk, with vegetables). That was so good I had two (female, both with roe). Apparently, that's what did it for me. I've had a similar (chills) allergic reaction before, but I get it only around every three years or so, so I forget the triggering factor and fall victim again a few years later.

So it was an allergic reaction to the crabs. It almost feels like minor food poisoning (I've had that too, once in a while, from street food I couldn't resist), except the crabs weren't bad since my mother-in-law also had some and she didn't get sick at all.

Sol enjoyed the crabs on the weekend, but she didn't have any last night (Monday) since we had been to the Wellington Hospital for her 21st week ante-natal checkup and she'd been advised (due to Listeria) to stay away crustaceans, shellfish, raw fish. She'll also be staying away from medium-rare steak.

There are more pictures of sol and timmy from the weekend,

And there's my mother-in-law, with the guilty crabs (well, not really, this was the good first batch, it was the Monday batch that got me down :-)

Laptopping, Dancing

2008-06-10T21:48:00.002+12:00

We bought Timmy a play laptop since he kept wanting to type on our real laptops.

And some days he's in a dancing mood.

Being an American A**h*le a**fckng Iraq

2008-06-07T19:41:00.002+12:00

Why simile is confusing, the U.S. government is being an asshole, assfucking Iraq over and over.

Sons of bitches.

Being Poor

2008-06-07T19:35:00.001+12:00

Being Poor

America has no enemies...

2008-06-03T08:17:00.003+12:00

except the ones it's making in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the United States of Arrogance wants to have its own way, and it'll kill, torture, rape civilians, women, children and the occasional bad guy) so that it can maintain its imploding standard of living.

Go home, America. And stay there.

Easy composting

2008-06-02T16:03:00.002+12:00

That is cool. I'd love to have the Plus edition. It'd be great if it composted diapers too. Timmy generates a lot of those, and we'll have more with the new baby on the way. Unfortunately, I don't see any mention of composting diapers. And even if they could handle diapers, I'm sure they can't take the volume generated by one baby :-).

Timmy singing

2008-05-23T17:17:00.004+12:00

Timmy's ~~mother-in-law~~ grandmother, my mother-in-law, sings him "Paper Roses" as a lullaby. She's always sung him just that one song. Now Timmy remembers songs and he prods us what to sing by singing the first part of the song he wants. In his repertoire, "Paper Roses" (actually, la-la-la-la :-), "Row, row, row your boat", "Baa-baa black sheep", and a few others from children's books we've read him.

SkyTV pausing -- maybe fixed

2008-05-22T20:24:00.002+12:00

We've had some trouble with video signal pauses with our SkyTV connection. We've had it on three separate days. Strangely, not all channels had the pauses. In particular, free to air NZ channels didn't have the pauses.

So it wasn't the signal transmission from the SkyTV satellite to our rooftop satellite dish. I thought maybe it was some issue with how Sky was pushing the data up to their satellite, from wherever it was coming from (UK and U.S., mostly, I think). That didn't seem right though, since there'd be a major public relations problem if all non-NZ video feeds had pauses.

I still don't know what the problem is. Today though, I applied Windows solution #4: Reboot. It wasn't sufficient to just turn off the decoder settop box. I had to unplug it and plug it back in. That seems to have fixed the pauses though. I guess there's some sort of problem with the decoder starting up sometimes, when we turn it on in the morning, and power-cycling it fixes the sync problem.

I'm very glad about this. My mother-in-law and sol really enjoy the Food channel (we spend the great majority of our TV watching time watching cooking shows there) and sometimes we all get frustrated because a particularly good show with mouth watering food is unwatchable because of 3 second pauses every 3 seconds.

I hope this problem is consistently solved by Windows solution #4 :-).

Carrying Chinese Water, Raping boys

2008-05-22T09:53:00.004+12:00

So not only do Americans torture innocent (and a few guilty muslims), they also torture for the Chinese government. Bravo.

Oh, and they sodomized Iraqi boys too, and videotaped the atrocity.

Damn. If the americans ever get their hands on me (given the insane regime there, it could happen, even though I'm completely innocent of all except blogging about American evil), I'm going to die. I'll kill myself before they can torture me.

More:
The FBI knew

There's a lesson there

2008-05-20T17:48:00.003+12:00

Don't go to the United States of Atrocity.

An embarrassment of riches

2008-05-15T19:47:00.003+12:00

I had a good day today. First I went to the main/central branch of the Wellington City :-).Libraries. I was to have an interview at 2PM, but I went to Wellington with Sol, so I had a few hours to kill at the library.

I hadn't been seated for more than 30 minutes or so when I got a call from yesterday's interview. They couldn't wait til Monday for a decision. I had to make a decision today. I could understand their dilemma. They had another candidate waiting for their decision. If they were to wait til Monday for mine, I might not accept, and the other candidate might no longer be available. I was their preferred candidate, but they couldn't afford to let the second candidate escape unhired if I were not to be available.

I promised to give them my decision before the end of the day.

I then proceeded to read from some java books. I'd done the same the previous day, testing out some new things that were discussed in the books (and which I knew of only theoretically), new to me, anyway, who last worked in java sometime around version 1.1 or very early 1.2. That was good fun. Yesterday I wanted to borrow Java in a Nutshell. Should have grabbed it yesterday. Someone else grabbed it and now I'll have to wait a month for it :-).

The interview at 2PM went very well. It was surprisingly short. And they didn't ask me any technical questions. I think that's a mistake. Employers who are hiring developers should always ask technical questions, and maybe have the developer solve some programming problems. But maybe Catalyst's directors have been around so many developers they can tell who is faking. Likely too, my interviewers were comfortable with the fact that my wife works for Catalyst, is doing very well, and says good things about me.

When the interview ended, I went back to the library to read and play some more. I got a call soon after. Catalyst was offering me a job. The offer was for less money than the first offer, but I accepted anyway. I like how Catalyst does things, my wife enjoys it there, so I'm sure I will too. Sol and I will be able to sample the surrounding restaurants at lunch, and go to work and come home at the same time. It'll be great.

My new job is likely to be mostly Java though. I'm reading up, getting familiar again. I'll also practice some trivial test programs on Tomcat, to see just what that's like. Time to look at Spring too. I don't know what ORM they might be using, but I have a week to learn things ahead of time :-).

Interview

2008-05-15T07:48:00.003+12:00

I went to an interview with iPredict at Victoria University yesterday. It was a great interview at a small startup. The offer is good, the work is going to be interesting. I'm definitely interested. I'd accept the position immediately, but then I got a call to schedule an interview with Catalyst IT, where sol works. So I'm delaying a decision on iPredict for a few days. If Catalyst makes me an offer, and it's competitive, and they make the decision very quickly, then I'll accept that. But if the offer is off by 10k a year or they don't make an offer by Monday, then I'll accept the iPredict offer.

I hope iPredict is still interested by Monday :-). I think they will be though. The market for PHP-Java developers is tight, and it's hard to find someone who is willing to work with both languages. As it happens, I think that PHP for the frontend and Java for complex logic is the right way to do things. I'm looking forward to working at either iPredict or Catalyst.

Interview tomorrow

2008-05-11T21:56:00.003+12:00

I've got an interview with a recruiter tomorrow. The position is an exact fit for my profile, so I'm pretty sure the interview will go well. I sent an application for a senior developer position. My resume is right for that position. I'm going to look at the intermediate developer positions too though. I'm coming off a series of team leader positions and I think I'd prefer the lower level positions though. At least for a year or two. After some decompression (and getting a feel for kiwi management style) I might be ready for team leader positions again.

So I think I'll be looking more at those intermediate positions rather than the one I'm interviewing for :-). I already expressed some of that to the recruiter in a phone call, so he won't be blindsided by it. I *am* open to a senior position too, but it'll depend on who else is on the team (senior support, is there a business analyst leader, etc). I'm OK with handling business analyst type work for short periods, but I don't enjoy it so I don't do well at it beyond a month or so.

I've also applied for 4 other positions (one in C++, the other three being exact matches again), and I'm waiting for a call from sol's company. I'd really prefer to work with sol's company, Catalyst IT Ldt. That'll be my first priority. But since I'm not certain to find a perfect match there (although the odds are pretty good), I'm applying for other jobs too. Everything I've applied for seems to be very interesting. I'll be applying, in the next few weeks, for the less perfect matches :-). There's a lot of work, but of course, not everything is a match (as to skills, technology preferences, or location, since I'm not open to work outside Wellington, or even in parts of Wellington which are not convenient to travel to (e.g., Upper Hutt).

Sol took two weeks to get an offer, although that was through extremely serendipitous happenstance. If I get an offer in two weeks or so I'll be doing pretty well.

Oh

2008-05-10T20:09:00.001+12:00

I'm not often sad. Usually I'm focused on the wonderful present, or looking forward, moving upward.

and then there's this.

TV and cable too!

2008-05-10T19:10:00.002+12:00

Sol and I were sure we didn't want a television. We weren't going to buy one, and we certainly weren't going to have cable. Timmy is entertained by playing with common household items, and I'm entertained watching him and reading online.

My mother-in-law arrived last week though, and a few weeks before that we had to buckle down to getting a TV. We won an auction on a 29" TV on (where else) TradeMe. We also bid on and won a TV cabinet for it.

We definitely weren't going to get cable because the website says installation costs NZ$600. That's almost half a month's rent right there :-).

And then two days ago I got a call from skytv. They have a promo, free installation and 3 months of free premium channels. Since my mother-in-law is here, and *she* won't be entertained by the internet when I find a job, well, we grabbed the deal :-).

We're very happy with the TV and cable now, even though it'll cost $45 a month :-). That's about NZ$140 a month for landline, broadband and cable. But I think we've stabilized our costs now (unless we buy a car, but that's going to be either never or after two paychecks, once I've got a job :-).

There are several cooking channels, there's Discovery, National Geographic and News, and the free NZ channels are much clearer now (for a week we were using the antenna on the roof). We won't be watching much in the way of sports, movies or entertainment news, although Sol will want a tivo when the French Open, Wimbledon, U.S. Open and Australian Open come around (very soon now). I haven't found a tivo on TradeMe yet though, and I don't have the necessary A/V jacks on either of our laptops to record shows using MythTV. She's thinking she'll be absent a lot for the French Open :-). I hope not.

May 8 2005

2008-05-08T17:52:00.004+12:00

Happy Anniversary Sol.

We were rather under-organized for the wedding :-). So we organized a trip to white island, with lechon, beer and a spectacular sunset, but we didn't organize a program (the guests made one up, thanks Cecil), and we didn't think of a photographer or videographer. Fortunately, we got donations of pictures (thanks May, Cecil, Francis) from people who were there :-).

I think I won't send a mass email :-). Those who know about RSS and have subscribed to my feed will see this soon, the rest will see when I post another timmy video I guess :-).

stupidity and society

2008-05-08T16:04:00.002+12:00

I have a pretty large sig quote file. But I add to it once in a while.

I recently added:

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
-- Friedrich von Schiller

and

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick
society.
-- Krishnamurti

I have a few favorites, but this one just doesn't appear enough in my sigs. I should really add it in there a few hundred times so it'll appear in every other email :-)

Pobrecito mexico tan lejos de Dios y a la vez
tan cerca de los Estados Unidos
Gen. Porfirio Diaz

along with, of course,

GW Bush: Impeach, Prosecute, Convict, Execute

the perfect scrambled eggs

2008-05-01T10:27:00.001+12:00

I have got to practice this and get it right, since scrambled eggs is pretty much the only thing I can cook. It might as well be perfect :-).

Well, hello there

2008-04-25T16:23:00.002+12:00

Sol went to Pacific Radiology for her first ultrasound. The baby is 10 weeks old and beautiful.

Talking

2008-04-14T22:21:00.002+12:00

Timmy talks a lot in this video.

A partial list:

Happy Birthday
Aaaaapple
Butt Then
Happy
Haaa (i.e., Hi)
Dud (i.e, Dude)
Nononono
nonyonyonyo
Theeeey (i.e, There)
pinakbet butter
Momo (i.e., No more)

verbose

2008-04-08T13:14:00.005+12:00

Timmy has been learning words lately. He's had quite a few words for a long time now, of course, Daddy, Dada, Mommy, Mama, Hug. But his learning is accelerating. We've got a video where he points at a car going by and says "Kah". Some sounds he still has trouble with, e.g., the R in car. And the TH in bath (which comes out "Bah"). He learned flower and tree a few weeks ago, and he's now using "Down" as a command. When he wants to get off his high chair. He's got hello, hi, and goobah already. And "yummy" from a story book we read him. There are a lot more words, but they're not very clear yet. He can even say, e.g., "butterfly" when we say it to him. But he doesn't seem to remember long words between sessions yet. Unless they're nonsense words, in which case he gets stuck on them for a week or more.

He's learning words very fast and, unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be able to chronicle his verbal progress very much here. I'll try though. And succeed once in a while :-).

Oh yeah. "wow!". he's got that down very well, including the tone of being amazed. Also, copying from me, when i tell him he shouldn't do something "nyonyonyonyo", complete with wagging finger. and "mo mow", complete with wagging hand (that's "no more").

Progress

2008-03-29T21:54:00.010+13:00

When we arrived, we stayed with friends of friends. They are lovely people and it's a great home, a good place to stop and take a breath. But it's never very comfortable staying with people I've never met before so we were in a rush to get a job and move into our own home.

Sol got a job at Catalyst IT two weeks after we arrived. This was a blessing descended from a long chain of blessings that started with an email post about postgresql. With the help of sol's best friend and her husband, we searched for a house to rent, drove around for three weekend-days looking at homes (thanks Julius!) and finally found the perfect little home from a web advertisement (thanks Arlene!). Our debt to Arlene and Julius are no longer within reach of our ability to repay, and as Jun Yamog says, the best we'll be able to do is pay it forward.

Our home-to-be wasn't going to be ready for another two weeks (it was being renovated) so we stayed on for two more weeks at our homestay, and we spent a heck of a lot of money buying our bedroom suite (Queen Anne bed, base and headboard, along with two bedside tables and a great dresser).

We were able to get the bed into the house two days before we moved in. When we moved in, all we had in the house was the bedroom suite, Timmy's crib, and the oven and dishwasher (which came with the house, although they're a bit old). We'd previously ordered a refrigerator, washing machine and dryer though (brand-new since we intend to stay here for a few years, and bring the whiteware with us when we move). Those arrived the afternoon after we moved in.


Timmy	Had to eat on the kitchen countertop


I continued to model my CamiguinAction t-shirts in the empty living room	while timmy modeled cuteness

Sol modeled the kitchen's walk-in cupboard

Quite a few snacks later...


Our second purchase from Trade Me (our first was the bedroom suite) was the dining set

On the same trip that another friend, Barry, helped me pick up the dining set, we also picked up a pair of lounging chairs. One is a lazyboy/rocker. The other just rocks, it doesn't recline. We use the second (rocker only) in Timmy's room because it squeaks less than the recliner. Both are in good condition, but less squeaking is important since we rock Timmy to sleep in it.


A week or so after that, we also bought a living room set, one 3 seater, two single seats, and a single rocker (not shown).

We still need a double bed (or two single beds) for the other double room and then I think our furniture buying Trade Me days will be over. Although Sol is still on the lookout for better looking curtains and I'm currently on the lookout for a Linksys NSLU2 :-).

Yeah, that's positive, alright.

2008-03-27T21:23:00.000+13:00

Trademe and carlessness

2008-03-20T10:07:00.002+13:00

We've been on Trademe a lot lately. That's New Zealand's dominant auction site (like ebay, but limited only to New Zealand). We've bought a few things, dining table and chairs, coffee table, living room suite, a lazyboy/recliner and its partner rocker (looks the same, but doesn't recline), a bedroom suite (bed, dresser with mirror and two bedside tables). We've been pretty limited in what we've bought though. There are incredible savings to be made by buying on Trademe, but we can't really participate in a lot of those savings since we don't have a car.

For the large items, we're lucky to have made the acquaintance of a kiwi (who is married to a filipina) who has a van he uses for trucking large items. For a fee, we transported the bedroom suite, the dining table and chairs, and the lazyboy pair. He's very nice, but we can only contact him for large pickups since the pickup/delivery fee is substantial (but still much less than the fees for commercial services). The coffee table and living room suite were delivered.

For small things though, we can't really make any savings since generally we'd like to purchase locally, so we could just go over and pick up the items, but since we have no car yet, we can't pick up.

In 6 months or so we might have bought a car already. But by then, likely, we'll have the opposite problem. We'll have too much stuff and will be posting them on trademe and insisting on pickup only :-).

Thanks to Trademe and Barry though (the kiwi with the van), we've got a house that's pretty much complete. We have two single beds to buy yet, for the extra room, for when my mother-in-law visits. We'll ask for Barry's help for those.

A car would be helpful too, for some things that are large but cheap. For instance, we've been here for two months and haven't ironed any clothes yet. We bought an iron, but we haven't got an ironing board yet. It's too large to walk up the mountain with, but too cheap to ask for Barry's help with :-). We've got some very good friends who could help with transporting it, but they've been so nice and helpful we're now reluctant to ask for more help. Sol has a workaround in mind though and if all goes well, we may have an ironing board by next Tuesday or so. And then the house would be complete :-).

There's no TV, no bookshelves, no books. But we don't really need any of those. WE'VE GOT BROADBAND! :-)

house maybe

2008-02-26T19:54:00.002+13:00

Today has been a good day. Sol went to a viewing of an apartment for rent yesterday. Today she was offered the apartment by the agent. She hasn't accepted yet because we were scheduled to view another apartment (a few blocks from where we live now) today. We just came from there and are very happy with it. The agent said he'd inform us within the next two days if he was going to offer it to us. I really hope he does. It's perfect, it's in the right area for us, and we REALLY, REALLY want to live there.

Well, we'll know by Thursday. If we don't get it, then we'll fall back on the first house.

first two weeks

2008-02-23T11:46:00.004+13:00

We arrived in Wellington, New Zealand on the 10th. It's the 23rd now, so we've been here around two weeks.

Here's a compilation video of timmy at manila international airport (you don't want to miss that part), and walking through the airport at Sydney.

We were very lucky to be put in touch with very good friends of Sol's best friend, they have a four bedroom house and are only using three. So we're on a homestay with them until we can get an apartment of our own.

Here are some views of the house, from the outside and looking out the dining room window into the front garden.

And views of the houses around us.

Sol was trying to take a picture of our room when someone popped his head into the frame.

We have half (a very generous half, since our host family is MUCH larger than ours) of the refrigerator. So we shop often (twice a week, or sometimes more frequently) since we need to refill our provisions when our half of the refrigerator approaches empty, or when we're running low on timmy's milk.

We bring Timmy because we both have to be there, so we don't forget anything, and because we can load up his stroller with heavy items, with me carrying the rest of the items for the ten minute walk uphill and home. He had a yogurt snack the first time we did that.

Timmy is an early riser. Normally I would resent that since I'm certainly not a morning person. However, he always wakes up smiling and makes the mornings lovely.

We were concerned about the milk (or formula) that Timmy would drink in NZ. We tried to get him to drink milk in Manila and the first time that failed (my mother-in-law couldn't stand his protests so she gave in and made him formula). We later gave him fresh milk and formula mixes and he was OK with those. We weren't sure how he'd react to NZ milk though, so we bought a can of formula and we researched brands of formula available in NZ, and what the equivalent of our manila formula was here.

It turns out that there was no problem. He loves the milk here and he drinks it better than he did his formula (he would often leave an ounce or more of formula in the bottle, here he drains the milk to the last drop).

And then he sleeps it off.

We've been here two weeks now. Last Thursday, Sol landed a job with Catalyst IT Limited, a specialist in open source technologies. We've got the first few hurdles, ahhh, hurdled. We're now working on finding the right apartment for us. That's a bit hard because we're not very mobile (with Sol starting work tomorrow, and not having a car or being able to drive here). Fortunately, we have had incredible help from Sol's best friend and her husband. Julius has been driving us all over Wellington in our search for an apartment. It'll probably take another week or two for us to settle on the right place. But luck has been with us so far, so maybe the streak will continue and we'll have a place by this week.

biblical fail

2008-02-19T15:56:00.002+13:00

Note: that's hosted on photobucket so as to avoid goatse shenanigans, and to be
polite to the original host. The original of
this biblical fail is here.

Despedida 2008

2008-02-15T22:50:00.003+13:00

On Feb 2, 2008, we had a despedida (going away) party at the Richmonde hotel. This was the same hotel we had Timmy's birthday party at. We certainly didn't have the budget for a function room though. We just rented a two room suite (with dining area, living room and kitchen) and had the party there.

We were concerned it might become standing room only, but it all worked out and while some did have to stand, the flow of people was such that we didn't really have the same people standing for hours.

The theme was "food we'd miss in NZ", so there was mamang's wonderful kare-kare, Amber pancit malabon and another white pancit, mamang's rellenong bangus, a lechon from cebu, malasugui sashimi (it was going to be kinilaw, but Sol changed her mind) and the piece de resistance (hehe, I don't know how to type accents in this textbox, and wouldn't be bothered to do so if I knew how), isaw baboy and isaw manok from Manang, in U.P. Diliman (isaw not showing in the picture, as, I think, Jack and his wife, who went and bought it, hadn't arrived yet).

We had a good mix of people I'd worked with, good friends and cousins of mine, and good friends of Sol.

I was very happy that we were very lucky, that diggi (from CamiguinAction) just happened to be passing through Manila and he brought Jaime, Julia and Paco.

There were a few babies there too, so Timmy had a good time walking around with them.

and of course, there was the penguin stuffed toy, now called "Hug" since he taught Timmy how to Hug (something he does enthusiastically now, almost exclusively to women, and when he says "Huuuuuuuu" while doing)

Timmy was also able to say goodbye to his maternal grandfather, whom he doesn't see enough

progress

2008-02-14T20:19:00.002+13:00

Today we made some forward progress. We went to the nearby Johnsonville town center to get some prepaid phone SIM cards and to open an account. We got both things accomplished. Both were very pleasant experiences. So we've got phones now, and our cash is out of our hands and we've got ATM cards.

Tomorrow sol goes to get her tax ID number (IRD). And then, I figure, she should be working on Monday :-).

bravo

2008-02-11T23:33:00.000+13:00

the lopsided results, and causes, of the USA-Israeli war on palestinians

Americans don't care though. And for Israel, well, while there's land to be stolen, there will be blood.

Landed

2008-02-11T11:48:00.000+13:00

WE left Manila for New Zealand on Saturday, 9 Feb. The flight was slightly delayed in leaving, so we took off at around 8PM. Landed in Sydney after 7 hours or so, at around 6AM local time, and around 3AM manila time. Timmy slept through most of the trip. He woke up though at around 1AM manila time and didn't go back to sleep. So the last two hours were a bit hard as sol and I had to carry him (he would fight when we tried to hold him while sitting down).

When we landed in Sydney we were a bit confused as to where we were to pick up Timmy's stroller. After some walking around we were told that it would have been shipped through to Wellington. So we went off in search of diapers because Timmy had run out by then (multiple diaper leaks on the plane). There was a little pharmacy in the airport bookstore and they had diapers. That was a Godsend. We also got to change some USD for AUD. Which was just right since we needed to get some water and a snack.

Apparently, in my peregrinations in search of Timmy's stroller I had dropped (i.e., LOST!!!) my passport. I had no idea it was lost, so we were very relaxed while waiting for our connecting flight. Fortunately, someone found it and gave it to AU immigration, who tracked me down and sent it on to our connecting flight gate. So on net, everything worked out well. It could have been a bit of a nightmare though.

I was a little irritated at NAIA international (Manila) because at a security stop the body search guy ran across my envelope of dollars and, when I told him what it was, paused for a bit, trying for intimidation, I guess, and then winked at me and told me it was OK. Which it was, I'm familiar with the rules and we weren't violating any law. Winking and letting me go was fine, but he then started hinting loudly for a tip by saying "Kung Hei Fat Choy", which is the greeting for Chinese New Year.

I wasn't irritated enough to make a scene. I ignored him though, and remembered to blog about him. In fact, every time I've been through NAIA customs, I've never been shaken down for bribes. I've seen a lot of hinting for tips and gifts though. So, things have improved from 20 years ago, when bribery wasn't the name of the game, instead customs officials would extort money and gifts to let undeclared but taxable items through. But things aren't normal yet.

In contrast, Sydney was a joy, and Wellington, International, although a much smaller airport, was just as good. Customs were very efficient and helpful. They could have been more efficient if they'd opened our boxes. But they took our (truthful) word that we only had clothes and such in there. I had to fill up a currency import form for the dollars, but that I'd expected. And in fact, the customs officer actually filled most of it up. She did the math (converting USD to NZD amounts) and, when I took my time trying to understand what to write in the form, she went ahead and entered most of the numbers, leaving me to enter just passport information and signature.

We are staying at a home-stay. That is, with friends of a friend who has a spare room. We'll stay maybe for a week or two, then we'll search for and find our own apartment or small house. Timmy was a bit confused about sleep last night. He slept most of the night, but fitfully, sometimes waking up and crying. He did sleep through most of the night though. He's having his morning nap now. He's slept longer than he should, so I'll be waking him up and maybe he won't have his afternoon nap so that he'll sleep through tonight again. All together, he's sleeping pretty well. That was our main concern. He has no problems eating and walking around, but we can't tell him about sleep yet. He's already half adjusted though from last night. I expect that he'll be fine by tomorrow.

last day

2008-02-09T14:36:00.000+13:00

We're leaving for New Zealand tonight. It's been a panicked last few days having lunch with best friends, playing badminton with new good friends, packing things, removing heavy already-packed things (and that's not yet complete), converting USD to NZD (that wasn't completed either, they didn't have enough NZD since we didn't notify them ahead of time, we'll complete when we land) and me giving my last postgresql lecture (CASE WHEN, how indexes work, optimization, explain, explain analyze, ...).

But we're finally almost done. Just a few last items and we leave for the airport in 5 hours or so. 3-4 hours to wait and we'll be on the plane. I hope Timmy is able to sleep on the plane since it's going to be a long 10-11 hours to NZ (including stopover in sydney).

Cracking up

2008-02-07T06:49:00.000+13:00

Timmy had a lot of fun

and again:

I've got a lot of videos, but I need to edit some of them into compilations. That takes time since I don't actually know what I'm doing when I do those edits :-). We're also booked solid for all meals til we leave for New Zealand on Saturday. Since most of those meals (or the occasional badminton game) are at malls or clubs some distance away (all interesting malls and restaurants are a significant distance away) travel time is a factor too. Likely I'll push up a compilation from NZ. That's not going to be a great thing to do, given the bandwidth limitations there, but one must bow to the tyranny of time.

Timmy walking -- long

2008-01-20T20:23:00.000+13:00

Timmy has been walking for a few months now. We'd get Timmy to walk alone (from me to sol or the other way) but it took a lot of cajoling to get him to walk by himself. Recently though, (when we got back from our New Year's trip to Cagayan de Oro) he suddenly gained a lot of confidence and started walking by himself. Following is a compilation of Timmy walking alone videos.

NZ slowly

2008-01-11T18:07:00.000+13:00

I just went and added a whole bunch of NZ blogs to my bloglines account. It's a bit less than a month before we fly out to NZ. Time to get acquainted with events and culture. I'm only looking at tech, employment and business/investment blogs for now. I may add a political blog or so, but that's not going to be interesting for me until I'm over there, so there's no hurry with political blogs. Commentary on culture and society though, I'm definitely looking for.

Fortunately

2007-12-27T15:00:00.000+13:00

It's a good thing that last Friday was my last day at work. Timmy has had a bad cough all through Christmas. We have to nebulize him with salbutamol three times a day and sometimes at night, if his breathing is particularly bad. We need to give him medicine for his colds and lung phlegm and sometimes paracetamol if he's uncomfortable because of fever. So I wouldn't have been able to go to work yesterday or today anyway, since often we need to be up late at night taking care of him.

We're going to Cagayan de Oro. We're hoping that the air (or the huge decrease in pollution) there will help his cough. He's still very happy and cheerful (except when his body or teeth ache because of fever or teething), but I wish the noises from the phlegm in his chest would go away.

I'm sure they will. He had coughs in December last year, this is probably the same. It could go away FASTER though. It's a bit hard to listen to him breathe :-(

Timmy - Growing U.P.

2007-12-24T15:57:00.001+13:00

Timmy is growing fast. He seems to be growing longer, rather than wider. At his doctor's (the lovely Dr Maelene Pile, highly recommended) appointment he hadn't gained weight but had gained length. He's also very active, so maybe that's why he's not gaining so much weight.


Even though he does enjoy lounging like an adult

He still enjoys pretending to be laundry

We don't go to U.P. enough. Sol and I graduated at The University of the Philippines at Diliman, although, ahhh, in different decades :-). We hope that Timmy goes to college there too, although if he doesn't, I'm sure he'll go somewhere better :-).

I'd have more pictures of U.P., except I mostly take pictures of timmy and sol

In those pictures, by the way, Sol is modeling the baby sling from Next9. It's very convenient and it looks lovely (although they have production problems, I think, so some things are out of stock).

My stepfather arrived from the U.S. and we stayed with them overnight one weekend before they flew onward to Cagayan de Oro. My stepfather had an unexpected long stay in the U.S. because he had some blood clotting related problems (in his leg, fortunately, not his brain).

Timmy spends a lot of time with my mother-in-law

We've been coughing a lot lately, Timmy and I. Fortunately, he's been taught by my mother-in-law to cover his mouth when coughing. And to pretend to cough and then to cover his mouth when he sees me coughing. Or maybe he's joking when he does that. Or suggesting I should cover my mouth. But I think he's joking, he always is, when he's crinkling his eyes like that.

He likes standing around with books, looking cute.

Something he might have not done so effortlessly if he'd known it was hair clipping day.


The first few minutes he was entertained by Barney on the TV, and his toy car barber's chair

After that he realized how unusual all these events were and the tears started flowing.


Fortunately he's very resilient. These were from a few hours later, at home, but he'd forgotten the tears just five minutes after we left the barbershop.

And a few days later he was back being cute again :-).

Last day

2007-12-23T00:36:00.000+13:00

Yesterday was my last day at work. I'll continue to provide completely optional support, unpaid. But this is because I really want to do the work. The database there is on the order of 400GB (I thought it was 500+GB, but then I ran a few clusters and lost some bragging rights). That's the main reason I want to work with it. I have permission to continue some experimental work to enhance performance and since I don't have access to any other database that large, I'm happy to do the experimental work for free because I'll learn from it :-).

The last week or so of work I was sick a lot. Some of that was due to the weather, some of it was, perhaps, over-adventurous eating :-). But a lot of it was just fatigue. Timmy is a handful and I'm not in my prime anymore. I'm going to have to get much more fit so I can take care of him fulltime when we get to New Zealand.

That's the proximate reason for quitting a job I enjoyed thoroughly. We're migrating to New Zealand so it was convenient to quit at the end of the year and take a month and a half to get ready for the trip. Now I'm trying to figure out what I'll be doing. I need to limit reading online articles. If I don't consciously limit it, I'll do it all day. every day. I need to be much more hands on with Timmy, and I need to exercise (weights and aerobics work) so that I get more fit.

I'm planning to learn how to use git too, and oracle, and visual C#, probably. I'll work more with java (after a very long hiatus) and maybe play with SQL Server. I'm working with the developer or express editions of all that payware, so there will be some things I won't learn (e.g., how oracle works on grid hardware or how to cluster oracle or SQL server for multi-master functionality). But it should be enough to learn the basics.

I'd love to learn more about postgresql, maybe even enough to be able to submit some patches. But that's just a wish, not something I'll be pushing extremely hard to do.

sick

2007-12-10T00:10:00.000+13:00

I've been sick since about Thursday. It's something like the flu, with the aches, runny nose and chills. Lately I'm coughing up a lot of phlegm and have a stuffy head (with some dizziness). It'll go away, it always does. It's miserable though. I hope I'm well enough to go to work tomorrow.

the smell of idiots

2007-11-26T04:02:00.000+13:00

Sol and I were at Kimono Ken today. That's our new favorite japanese restaurant. I've been disappointed at Sushi-ya the last few times we've been there because while they've kept the prices the same, they've reconfigured the menu so that cost is lower (i.e., they provide smaller portions).

At the low end, the other alternative is saisaki. But that's like the Delifrance at St Lukes for me now. I will never eat there again. In fact, it's possibly worse than the Delifrance at St Lukes because I will never eat at saisaki again even if someone else pays for the buffet.

The food is reasonable, but saisaki is part of a group of restaurants that includes Dad's and Kamayan. Unfortunately, Dad's (or Kamayan, but now the whole group of restaurants) has a singing group at each combined restaurant. They're cute, I suppose, for people new to the Philippines, but they're extremely annoying to anyone who just wants to enjoy their meal. So we're never going there.

But back to that title there. We were at Kimono Ken. It's our new favorite japanese restaurant (Sugi in Makati would be an easy favorite, but we can't afford to go there more than once or twice a year). We've had a few great meals there. Today though, the waiter was wearing some cologne that smelled like ammonia. Seriously, what non-idiot would spend a fortune on a scent that makes them smell like a toilet? I have never thought it was a good thing for anyone (particularly men) to wear any sort of scent. But when I can smell someone from 6 meters away, I start to estimate how dumb that person must be, and the further away I can smell them, the dumber they must be.

I wouldn't mind if they were just dumb, but, like smokers, they force their stupidity into my consciousness just by being there and stinking. Next time, we might go to another Kimono Ken branch. Or if not, I'm certainly going to request another waiter.

The salmon sashimi, yaki-soba, yaki-udon ang uni were wonderful though. The spicy maguro sushi wasn't any good. don't go there. the juice shakes were too sweet, but after I'd cut my shake with about a glass and a half of water I could finally stand it.

Too sweet is a problem in this country, but it's not something i fight too hard. Some wars are not worth fighting (and this one is unwinnable). I would have ordered beer, but we had gone to the Podium by motorcycle, and I won't have a single beer if I'm going to be driving within the next twelve hours :-).

Timmy's Birthday

2007-11-12T01:46:00.000+13:00

It was Timmy's first birthday last Friday, Nov 2, 2006. Fortunately, that's a holiday due to All Soul's and All Saint's day. We're going to miss Nov 1, Nov 2 being holidays when we're in New Zealand.

We decided to go to a hotel, take a suite and have the party there instead of at home. Home is a bit small and parking is impossible, so having the party in a hotel works *much* better. We liked that enough that we'll probably be at the same hotel (at the same floor) for New Year's too.

The preparations started at home. The suite at Richmonde hotel has a kitchen (and two bedrooms and a living room area) but not enough pots, pans and other gear for everything sol and her mom wanted to prepare. So most of the food was prepared at home.


There were the shrimps for the pesto


That shredded bacon is for the carbonara that's left of the pesto there

Timmy met his cake early on.

The cake was home made, by Sol. Carrot cake with lovely lemon zest and a picture of Timmy on top.

Timmy was very happy while waiting for the guests to arrive.

His mother was very proud.

Sol thought the candles and the whole celebration would be better with the lights out. I think she was right. The video comes out a bit dark though.


The pump had to be primed a bit

But Timmy got the idea and started to do some damage

A whole bunch of celebrities wanted their pictures taken with Timmy


That's my mother-in-law	Pats

Ardie	Bobot and Keith

my brothers-in-law, Jay on the left, Bobot on the right

Timmy's cake was a work of art when he was done


The pasta was great, missing from the picture was the most incredible clam chowder

The cake barely survived :-). So Sol had to make more when we got back home

	Timmy met Julia, Sol's godchild, daughter of Rhoda, Sol's best friend, and one of mine now, too


The exhausted birthday boy

New desktop background

2007-11-10T04:15:00.000+13:00

Timmy is, once again, on my desktop:

That's from a few hours before the actual party.

I'm sure Victoria is going to say something about that right second toe too :-).

[Update]
Sol changed my desktop background for me ;-). I agree though, this one is even better.

A week in the hospital

2007-10-26T02:49:00.000+13:00

Ok, it wasn't really a week. It was four days. It sure felt like a month though.

We'd all been having a pretty good night, timmy read his books as part of his nighttime ritual.

We had trouble that night though. He kept waking up coughing. He'd been coughing for a day or so before, but we were concerned because I thought his breathing was too rapid and too deep. We decided, after consulting via SMS with Timmy's doctor (the lovely Dr Maria Elena Quimpo, his aunt and my first cousin) to bring him to St Lukes. After a few hours of nebulizing at the Emergency Room, we had Timmy admitted to the hospital.

He had to have an IV drip installed. He was pretty good about it, yelling when it was going in, but then calming down and getting used to it pretty well.

I had to take the week off from work. Fortunately I have enough flexibility that I'm able to do that. I thought I could do some remote programming at the hospital. I was sorely mistaken though. Taking care of Timmy was a fulltime job in the daytime. Even simple things like feeding him needed four hands since someone had to hold or watch him so he didn't rip the IV out by moving his arm too fast, while someone else prepared the food or milk. Timmy was attached to a machine that monitored and ensured the correct drip rate of the IV and that made the length of free tube very short.

With rest and medication though,


Timmy got well enough so we could bring him home.

He's making us worried again tonight. We're going to be nebulizing again every 6 hours. I hope that the virus goes away and he recovers completely.
The hospital stay was pretty expensive. St Lukes in Quezon City is one of the best hospitals in the country, but you pay for what you get. To be sure, $600 for the 4 day stay, meds, equipment rental, and emergency room care was worthwhile, and very cheap compared to what it would have cost in the U.S., for instance. But it's a significant chunk of change and we're very thankful we had the wherewithal to cover the cost.
We have to process a PhilHealth refund. That'll help a bit. I was pleasantly surprised, when I went to the Quezon City Philhealth office, to be able to get all the PhilHealth documentation I needed in about an hour. Some government systems do work reasonably well (although I've also been on the receiving end of some horrendously bad service by other government agencies). I don't think I've seen anything optimal in any government agency, but that some things work at all is good to see.

steak!

2007-10-15T08:33:00.000+13:00

A month or so ago my mother came back from the U.S.

She brought cheese (a half circle of blue cheese, which I'm consuming diligently, and which enriched a pasta dinner we had two weeks ago, to deep and lovely effect) and six huge steaks. It's impossible to get steaks like that here. Meat is sufficiently expensive that there are no huge portions because there's not much of a market for 3 or 4 lb steaks. My mother bought these steaks at costco and they're monsters.

We had some of that a few weeks ago. and we had some more yesterday (Saturday). It's certainly not the case that everything that comes out of the U.S. is evil. The steaks are pretty good. We had a great time this week. Of course there was isaw at U.P. Diliman on Friday (which was a public holiday, being the end of Ramadan). My in-laws want to do that again, so maybe we'll do it this coming weekend or the next. And then there was steak, mashed potatoes and gravy. That was lovely. We've got one more steak and we seriously considered having steak AGAIN. Fortunately, today we had lechon kawali for lunch. That was heart-attack city and great with vinegar and garlic.

Despite all this wonderful food, I'm not gaining weight. Clearly, I need to eat some MORE! :-)

Bullshit

2007-10-14T16:03:00.000+13:00

There's new evidence that the Blackwater guards who killed 17 and wounded 27 people (among them women and children), these heroes of the U.S. State Department, weren't fired on at all. They lied about a vehicle being disabled and having to be towed away.

And an american military official says, "If our people had done this they would be court-martialed.".

Easy for him to say. And bullshit anyway. There would have been a court martial, sure. Purely for show. And then no one would have been convicted. Those Iraqis got off easy, they weren't even tortured before they were killed.

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Being an American A**h*le a**fckng Iraq