|
|
Journals HomePhoto AlbumsWork Files |
Moments after delivery. All is well, and that is joy. |
In this photo, Matthew is asleep. |
In this photo, Matthew seems to be asleep. |
Papa gazes fondly down at a sleeping baby. |
Emma nurses her teddy. |
Matthew wakes up for a moment before going back to sleep. |
Matthew. Asleep. |
For a moment, it looks like Matthew might wake up, |
In what will become a common event, Emma gleefully |
Matthew. Asleep. Again. Still. |
The incorporated family of Sharon Beth Palm & Michael Friesen (with Emma Lily Friesen as Senior Junior Partner) is pleased to announce the addition of a Junior Junior Partner to the enterprise.
After complex negotiations liberally laced with "I dunno; what do you think?", the new entity has been named "Matthew Alexander". At this point, all participants appear satisfied with the title, other options not really having included ‘Dubya’, ‘Osama’, ‘Leroy’, ‘Barney’, and ‘Kermit’.
Matthew Alexander was available for comment, but remained unintelligible in spite of the interviewer's persistent cooing and the fact that he had soiled his nappy.
His arrival followed six hours of contractions and precisely two hard pushes over a period of ten minutees, ending at 4:10AM. Born on October 17, he arrived more or less perfectly on time.
Authorities present at the inception (as opposed to the conception) noted that earlier problems with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck were not manifested at birth, though he had somehow managed to tie the thing into a complete knot. Matthew's assets include elfin ears, a fully head of brown hair, and a 4.05kg birth weight. APGAR scores of 9 & 10 were reported by observers.
Senior Junior Partner Emma Lily Friesen reports being pleased with her brother's name, given that she can pronounce at least the first half of it. She remains upbeat about the new arrival, frequently hugging and kissing him. Showing solidarity with her mother, she has attempted to breast-feed her teddy bear.
Parents Sharon and Michael are particularly happy with Matthew's fondness for sleeping. They were available for comment, but remained unintelligible in spite of the interviewer's persistent cooing and the fact that Matthew had soiled his nappy.
And now, we return to our irregularly unscheduled journal.
Poetry: I recently unearthed some verses that I did a few years back. I'm happy to have them, since they're sonnets -- a somewhat tricky verse form to write, and a terrible thing to lose. Oddly enough, the drive off which I pulled the files died just a few hours later, before I had the presence of mind to grab other goodies that might have been solely deposited there.
This business of losing files that I really like kinda burns really badly. I'm not sure, but I somewhat suspect that I had some music sequences stored on that drive: sequences that only exist now on crappy cassette tapes that might or might not still work.
My only comfort lies in knowing that, even if I had the original sequences, I would STILL never get that sound back again. Most of the synths that I used to create the sounds are gone, and will never be modeled in software. In some cases, I was using analog gear and manually ‘playing’ the knobs to get the sound I wanted printed onto the tape.
Bummer.
In the past few weeks, I've posted some templates for the very excellent “Omnigraffle” charting program. I've noticed a distinct lack of professional network templates for Omnigraffle, so I whipped out Illustrator and re-acquainted myself with Bezier curves. Groan.
The good news about the graphics is that they're really, REALLY good approximations of standard network devices used in Cisco documentation. Some of the end systems are a bit antiquated in their graphic representations, but they'll do for now. The “PC” doesn't have a mouse, and their image of a Mac is from the ”IIfx” era. Of course, industrial design being what it is, we should probably depict Wintel boxes as toasters with mice attached.
No, I'm sorry. I take that back. It's not fair to toaster designers, and seriously impugns the reliability of the average toaster.
That said, I have to give high praise to Omnigraffle. It is, admittedly, missing the database integration offered by Visio, and the control over line placement and intersection in complex drawings doesn't thrill me, but the visual quality of the drawing environment is vastly superior.
Visio's environment just turns me off: it's really quite unpleasant, particularly when compared with the elegance of Omnigraffle.
You can find the templates here.
I was absolutely thrilled when I discovered Eric S. Raymond's discussion of hacker punctuation. As an erstwhile teacher of English, I've long been uneasy about the fact that my own punctuation occasionally violates the rules in some pretty unambiguous ways.
What thrilled me about ESR's discussion (somewhere on http://www.catb.org/~esr/) was the manner in which he clearly articulated precisely why alternative punctuation exists -- and what it says about the person who consciously opts to use it.
Note that I have nothing but disdain for those who break rules out of ignorance; and those who break rules for soi-disant 'artistry' deserve to be treated with suspicion. But breaking the rules, having a functional motive for doing so, and accepting that not everybody is going to agree with you... well, that's slightly less uncool.
|
|
Emma takes a moment to admire the, um, “ledge” upon which she’s sitting. This was about 24 hours before delivery. Speaking of which, there was a sign at the back side of the hospital, announcing an entrance to be used for “deliveries only”. Hey, _I_ thought it made sense. |
Enough. Time to post this. Peace to all.
February, 2004
