acedanger's blog

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

Aaron's intermittent exotropia I discussed previously has been getting progressively worse. Meri and I have both been noticing that he is squinting more and more, even when he's not outside in full sun and even when he's wearing sunglasses.  Meri and I have had a bad feeling about what we both [pessimistically] thought would need to happen next.

Meri took him to the ophthalmologist again yesterday to have him re-examined (since it's been 6 months since he was first diagnosed) The doctor is one of the best in the area (from what we've been told).  Meri works in an ER and has spoken with several opthamalogists that stroll through there and they recommend him (and more importantly, use him).

The doctor looked at Aaron's eyes and told Meri that his condition was deteriorating. He told her that the only solution for Aaron's case was to have the corrective surgery.  We knew this day was coming and have talked about what we should do next.  We've done a lot of research and have both anguished about this decision for a long time - we decided that Aaron should finally have the surgery.

I can't speak for Meri, but I am not fearful that the doctor won't do a good job and I am fully expecting that the surgery will be successful.  We are both very worried about Aaron having to be sedated for the surgery. Meri working in the medical for so long is both a blessing and a curse in that she knows a lot about what to expect.  Knowledge can be power but it can also be crippling, especially in the case of surgery for one of your kids.  While the surgery is not exactly necessary (in my understanding anyway), if successful, it would greatly improve Aaron's quality of life.

So the surgery is scheduled for just under two weeks away (July 10th).  We have a pre-op appointment 7 days before the surgery so that we can hear about all of the details. Meri spoke briefly about recovery time and the doctur said that it would only be a few hours for Aaron, but he couldn't go to the pool or play with sand for a week after the surgery.

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

I had an interview yesterday for a 6 month contract. I really liked the facility and the work environment seemed very clean and nice. The people I interviewed with were very nice. The only problem I have with it, is the length of the contract. My biggest worry is about not being extended. Both of the people I spoke with spoke long-term so that made me feel a bit better, I just can't shake the worry though. I thought I'd make a list of pro's and con's of my current and prospective contracts.

Current company pros

• Relatively stable - current contract expires in Sept 2008 but there is an extension in the hands of the client's legal department awaiting approval that would expire in Sept 2010.


• I am allowed to work from home one day a week.


• Pay is good, benefits are decent and fairly inexpensive

Current company cons

• I'm fucking miserable here!


• I'm writing code about 10% of the time, the other 90% is spent analyzing production data and modifying it since it's been screwed up by the system - basically, I feel like I work on a help desk.


• Being on-call. I have a pager that I have to "man" once every 10 days (approximately speaking); every 5th weekend, I'm on-call and basically can't leave my house.


• I now how 3 time sheets to fill out! One of them, the newest, easily takes about 30mins/day to fill out.


• I'm not learning anything new here since I'm barely writing any code.


• I have to commute 62 miles (round trip) and spend about 45 minutes on I4 (with smooth traffic, no accidents).

Contract position pros

• Major pay increase, 66% from my current hourly rate - dollar for dollar, not including how much my benefits cost. Meri would pick up the benefits from working part-time at her job.


• 20 mile round trip from my house to client site.


• I would be writing code again!


• No more on-call support (and therefore no more feeling like I work on a help desk).

Contract position cons

• Only a guaranteed 6 month contract. The company has a very strong history of extending their contractors and eventually offering them full-time positions, but that is not guaranteed. The only guarantee is that I'll have a paycheck for 6 months.

If the client decided not to renew the contract at the end of the 6 month period, they would have to let me know 45 days prior to the end of contract and vice versa if I decided not to stay with them either. If the contract expired in 6 months and was not renewed, we would be able to live on the "extra" money that I made from the hourly increase for about 4 months after the contract was over. That would give me 4 months to either look for another job or find another contract. If I was unable to find another full-time position somewhere else in Orlando. Moving out of Orlando is not an option. If I did have to start working other contracts, then I would potentially have to travel a lot.

So basically, I'm not sure what to do. Any ideas?

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

Aaron and I had a fun day. We played the beach ball game in the house a couple times, we went to the pool, we watched T.V. together and we did about 4 or 5 puzzles together. Aaron had his final soccer game of the season last Thursday (6/5/08).

The coaches had a party for both teams and all of the kids got a trophy for playing. They had all kinds of great stuff for the kids, pizza, cupcakes, fruit and veggie platters, soccer tattoos, a trampoline, a tire swing and a cool tree house. At the end of the party, all of the kids got a cool trophy.

We came back from Aaron's soccer party tonight and started the bedtime routine about 45 minutes late because of the party. We came into Aaron's room and I put some water into his fish tank since it keeps losing water somehow. Meri came in with Eli and was looking at the tank and I said "I put extra water in it" and she said "that's not why I'm looking at it". It turns out that one of Aaron's fish, named Orange (see picture below) died. R.I.P. Orange, Aaron will miss you very much!

We bought Aaron a fish tank as a reward for behaving so well for a long time. He loved it. Here are a couple of pictures of Aaron's fish tank and his final surviving fish, Grapey.

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

Of course I mean my interest in my current job.  It seems I can't stand to stay at a place for over a year (check my linkedin.com profile).  There are a few LANSA contracts in central Florida but with the economy behaving the way it is, I don't think I'm too nervous to take that step and work for myself. Meri can tell when I'm fed up with my jobs and last night, she told me that she would be OK renting the house and moving again. That's the last thing I want to do. We've moved 4 times since I graduated from college and I'm sick of packing up all my junk and moving it around. I'd rather stay in central Florida as long as possible. I thought about maybe going to school to get a masters degree in something from UCF but I don't think now is the time for that. Meri and I were talking and she's very interested in going back to school to be a teacher. Right now, she's looking at getting a master's degree for herself. She's looking to be finished in about two years.  That's not a whole lot of time and we'll be more than comfortable living on my income alone. We've been doing it for the past couple of months and we haven't HAD to slow down our spending; we have cut back but not out of need, I just want to start putting a lot more away for retirement. I've also become very interested in getting back into web development. Basically, I'd like to do what I was doing at my last job, just with a stable company this time!

In other, less pleasant news, we're flying up to Massachusetts to visit the in-laws and yes, we're flying with both of our kids! In more pleasant news, we're going to celebrate Aaron's 4th birthday birthday while we are up there and and also let the rest of the family meet Eli for the first time. Aaron's birthday is next Tuesday, May 6th.

I think that's enough rambling for now. I have another blog that I've been posting short posts to, it's at dfktv.com. Also, if you have any idea what Twitter is, follow me!  I can be found here.  Twitter is pretty damned addictive, especially if you use it in conjunction with twhirl!

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

From the first moment we talked, after we hung out for the first time that night in my dorm room and after I realized she wasn't some Amazonianly-tall girl like the picture she sent me led me to believe, I was finally proven right after so many years of half-hearted joking.

I would sometimes say to her "you always loved me" when she would reminisce about how much of a pain-in-the-ass I was when we were dating in college. On again, off again, on again...you get the picture. All of that drama caused because I was impatient and not ready to succumb to the fact that deep down, I knew that she would be my future wife and I just wasn't ready to for that yet. We've been together for over 8 years and married for over 4, 5 in November.

Last night, she told me that she realized I was actually right in saying that "you always loved me". She remembered telling one of her old boyfriends that she that she was going to marry me one day. That was after we had only hung out a few times. We talked so much more than that. Old

Somehow, even way back then, we both knew that we would be married one day. We now have each other and our two little boys now. Who knows if she will actually let me try to have that little girl that I want so badly (not just me, you know how that works)? With Meri, Aaron and Eli, I'm feel very happy with my family and where we are at this point in our lives.

Who would have thought that by just talking to someone one day, it would turn into a full-blown family one day?!

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

Holy sheep shit! I just fixed a known (to me) bug in the vox-crossposter WP plugin I wrote a LONG time ago.

All I changed was the character encoding from

$email_headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1'."\r\n";

to

$email_headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'."\r\n";

If you look at the second "known bugs" list at http://www.acedanger.com/vox-crossposter, you will see exactly what I changed.  Now I need to get home so I can update the download link and the download from the Wordpress Plugin site.

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

testing stuff.  cuz it's fun.  Was there a funky A-like character in there somewhere?!

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

Aaron starts soccer practice tonight. This time, he's on a team that we thought was really badass the last time he was in the league. This team was great last year in that most of the parents wore shirts that matched the kids' jerserys at each game. There was enough kids on the team last season that some were able to sit and rest and didn't have to run the entire game.

This soccer season is sort of weird though, we have our first practice tonight and our first game on Saturday! I know there will be some kids that won't be ready to play a game after only one practice so it will be interesting.

Meri got her truck back after 13 days in the shop! Hooray for the shop not having anything else to do so they could have 4 people working on the Jeep and being 16 days ahead of schedule!

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

So the in-laws have come and gone, thank God! It wasn't a bad trip this time, just strange. Meri's mom didn't really say a whole lot, which was very nice IMO. Normally she's all over us about how we discipline Aaron (rules rules rules, so many rules...um, no, that's called structure). Meri's dad was great, as usual. He and Aaron had a ton of fun playing together.

I did more house-work during the past 4 days that I normally do. I finally touched up all of the scrapes on the walls from moving in about a year ago, I patched holes in walls from the lights we replaced in both upstairs bathrooms, I even painted the pantry doors handles and doors that have been worn down from us opening and closing them so much, I even re-caulked the master bathroom shower!  It was a great couple of days for home maintenance.

Meri's truck is ready, after all of about 12 days. It wasn't supposed to be ready until April 17th. The dealership said they were "16 days ahead of schedule"! How the hell did that happen? We'll be very happy to drop off the rental car we have and pick up her truck. It's hard for me to go from driving a 2005 Tacoma four-door to a 2006 G5 coupe...especially on I-4 during two rush hours. Finally, I can feel [relatively] safe again...not to mention, I'll have a lot more room to put both boys in the vehicle I'm driving.

Originally published at ace's blog. You can comment here or there.

Eli is eight days old. After having him with us, I can't help but wonder...why didn't we do this sooner?! Seriously, this is great. Eli sleeps through the night (mostly, he might wake up twice), cries softly and is adorable too! It is wonderful to see Aaron interacting with him. Oh! Eli takes a pacifier! Do you know/understand how wonderful that is?! Is he crying? Give him the pacifier? Still crying? Feed him. These two things quiet 90% of the crying that Eli does, it's amazing!

I'm glad we had Aaron first and learned how to deal with his needs (there were lots). Eli's baby phase is night and day with Aaron's baby phase. Aaron had us both on our toes; Eli makes us forget we have toes.

Meri's aunt came down from Massachussettes to help us for 10 days. She handled Aaron and all of his needs/wants and Meri and I handled Eli, not that there needed to be two of us doing that; he is so easy-going. Having her here was great! Aaron loved doing anything and everything with her.

The only bad thing that happened while she was here was that she got into a car accident when taking Aaron to Sea World this past Monday. Poor Aaron, he's been in two accidents in about 3 years! It was Meri's aunt's fault. Nobody was hurt, the girl that got hit might even start watching Eli a couple of days during the week at our house when/if Meri decides to go back to work. She worked with tutoring kids for three years and is an Elementary Education major. So this might have turned out to be a "good accident". So the bad part of the accident? $6900 worth of damage (at first glance anyway, could be more) and we're without Meri's car for a month, minimum! We are getting a rental car and Meri's aunt is paying for most of that plus our insurance deductible. That was very admirable of her and it takes us out of a pinch, since we really didn't have that kind of money to fork out since Meri just stopped working. We are picking up the car next monday and I'll drive that thing to and from work.

Having a newborn home and Meri not having a car did present an awesome opportunity for me though. I am working from home four days this week! I really like working from home. I can wake up and come to my computer and just start working! No more commuting for an hour in the morning and then an hour at night. I just start working at 7 or 8 am and then just stop around 4 or 5.

Even with the accident while she was here, it was a huge help having Meri's aunt here. It gave us some transition time with the two kids and an opportunity to attempt a new schedule with two kids. Aaron had tons of fun helping her cook (and she cooked A LOT!).