This is America

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

Return on assets

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

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

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

This is Israel

Yes, but

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

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

Timmy loves this

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Krauthammer, still the asshole he ever was

Tummy bug

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

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

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

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

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

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