Monday, March 20, 2006

Working from Home

Before diving into today’s blog, I’d like to thank people for asking about my daughter.  Her ear tube surgery went great, and 11 minutes after we left her with the anesthesiologist, he came out to the waiting area and said she was done.  No unusual anesthetic reactions, and we were home before noon.  Very nice.

And now for today’s blog.

As of two weeks ago, I have my work computer set up for remote access from home.  This is very nice for times when you want to work from home, like when your kid is recovering from ear tube surgery.  It saves vacation time, after all, and enables me to hit the overtime mark now that I’m approved for it.  It’s also great when you hit brain-fry at work and want to eat dinner with the family while still having work to do that you can get done after the kid(s) go down to bed.  Finally, when the weather goes bad, or you think you’re coming down with a cold, you can still get work done.

All in all, it’s nice to be able to work from home, even if there are things you really can’t do from home (like print multiple 11x17” documents in duplex on the high-speed laserjet next to your office).

But there are disadvantages.  My friend Sam once said with regard to his Dungeons and Dragons game: “The disadvantage of having the undivided attention of your deity is that you have the undivided attention of your diety.” The same holds true for being able to work from home.

For example, being able to work from home when you have some workaholic tendencies isn’t always a good thing.  And it’s nice to be able to leave work at work, rather than feeling like you always have to check your email.  And being liable in the event that my home computer accidentally infects the corporate network with a virus is uncomfortable even if it is completely reasonable.

All in all, at least over the last three weeks or so, having remote access to my work computer has been a good thing.  Hopefully it’ll continue to be so.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Ear Tubes

I had bad ear infections as a child.  The infections were bad enough that I had tubes in my ears for something like 3-4 years, and when they put the tubes in, they removed two glands in my throat too, in case the glands were part of the problem.  Apparently, I had such a high pain threshold in my ears that I never complained (except once I remember VERY well - descending from 36,000 feet to sea-level with an ear infection is one of the two most painful experiences in my entire life) about ear pain, and by the time they put the tubes in, I’d suffered minor hearing loss in one of my ears.

When you include the fact that most of my wife’s family had ear infections as kids, and my daughter was all but doomed to get infections too.  And so early tomorrow morning, we’re taking my daughter to Children’s Hospital to get tubes in her ears.  Unlike me, she’s getting her tubes at just shy of two years old.  She’s at an age when she’s not likely to need custom earplugs for swimming lessons, and she may not even remember having them when she gets older.

Unfortunately, she has to go under general anesthetic for the procedure.  Now, we’re doing this with a pediatric ear-nose-throat doctor, and we’re doing it at Children’s Hospital where pediatric anesthesiologists do this kind of thing all the time.  But I was kept under observation an extra day after my only experience with general anesthetic (my tubes) because I wasn’t coming out from it as fast as the doctors expected, and my wife’s uncle has a potentially fatal allergy to anesthesia, so I’m a little nervous.

For the very first time, I’m putting my daughter’s very life in another’s hands, and I’m honest-to-the-Gods scared.  This isn’t like day-care, where we met her teachers, toured the facility, and where there is all kinds of security to keep kids from wandering off or hurting themselves.  This is surgery.  Minor surgery that will require only the shortest duration of unconsciousness, to be sure, but surgery nonetheless.  And while I trust the ENT who will be putting the tubes in her ears, I’ve never met the anestheologist, and may not even tomorrow.  And the history of drug reactions, minor or otherwise, on both sides makes this an unknown the level of which I’m having a hard time dealing with.

The chances are excellent that everything will be fine.  And if everything’s not fine, then there’s no better place for my daughter to have complications than Children’s Hospital.  And most likely, my wife and I will be able to come home late morning/early afternoon and get chores done around the house while Bridget plays in front of Sesame Street, none the worse for the experience.

Somehow, though, the laws of probability and science on which I’ve based my career offer me precious little comfort, and I expect to find myself lying awake tonight, staring at the ceiling, knowing that, however close to 100% the probability of a normal surgery is, it’s never going to be 100%.

May Bridget’s namesake, the Irish goddess Bridget, protect my daughter tomorrow morning.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The Daily Mantra:  Blogging Breaks

Taking breaks from blogging are nice, but it’s hard to get back into blogging after the break.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Scientific American Rundown, March 2006

I love Scientific American.  Not only do they often do an April Fool’s editor’s note for the April article (last year’s was about how they apologized for reporting on global warming and evolution since only 98% of the data supported both), but they have amazing articles too.  And the March 2006 magazine was better than most.  I strongly urge people with interests beyond my quick blurbs below to buy a copy from the newsstand before they disappear or to visit their website, http://www.sciam.com. 

One article (The Dangers of Ocean Acidification) was on the acidification of the oceans.  The gist if the article is that increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are/will gradually make the oceans more acidic, probably causing serious problems with certain kinds of life upon which whales and any number of other species depend for food.  Big problem.  But the author said something else I found absolutely remarkable, since I’ve never heard it before.  Scott C. Doney said:

This burgeoning supply of carbon comes largely from the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas. (Cement production and the burning of tropical forests add some, too, but to simplify things, let me gloss over such secondary contributions for the sake of clarity.) Unlike the constituents of living organisms, fossil fuels contain little or none of the radioactive form of carbon: the carbon 14 isotope, which has eight neutrons in the nucleus rather than the usual six.  Fossil fuels also display a unique ratio of the two stable isotopes of carbon (carbon 12 and carbon 13).  The combustion of these fuels thus leaves a distinct isotopic signature in the atmosphere.  So no one can question where the growing surplus of carbon dioxide comes from.

Now, I’m skeptical enough to wonder where the science and reference is for this statement, because I’ve never seen it.  And I’d absolutely love to.  Because if the isotopic concentrations of CO2 in the air are obviously coming from fossil fuels, then this would be pretty much a slam dunk on human influenced global climate change.

Another article was titled “The Limits of Reason,” and it was about how mathematics has inherently unprovable assertions and that mathematicians should spend more time being creative with new axioms as opposed to trying to derive mathematical proofs from old, stuffy, and accepted axioms.  If there are an infinite number of mathematical axioms that cannot be proven, then there are possibly an infinite number of mathematical ways to represent, for example, the laws of physics.  And just imagine if some brilliant mathematician developed new maths that enabled us to do things with physics that our current maths say is unsolvable?  That would be totally cool.  Yes, I know I’m a geek, but the idea of math being a creative enterprise as much as a logical one appeals greatly to this whole-brain thinker.

And the third article I really liked was “Little Green Molecules.” The authors, Terrence J. Collins and Chip Walter, helped to invent new molecules that are not only biodegradable themselves, but that use non-toxic oxygen and good-old fashioned hydrogen peroxide to break down chemicals like dioxins (known to cause cancer in humans), plastics, herbicides, and maybe ultimately eliminate the need for metal-based chemicals (which can cause lead poisoning, just as an example) altogether.  Such artificial but environmentally-friendly catalysts could reduce water use, improve energy efficiency, aid in the creation of environmentally-friendly plastics from plants instead of oil, and replace toxic solvents entirely.  Very cool.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Blogging Software Search

I generally like PMachine Pro, the software I use to write these blogs.  It has a pretty clean interface, setting up the templates wasn’t too painful, and until recently, comment spam hasn’t been totally crazy.  But with my plan for my next blog, and the fact that my wonderful wife not only has a very real interest in contributing to the new blog but also wants to help organize it, we discovered that PMachine Pro just won’t cut it long-term.  If nothing else, we need a program that is supported, and PMachine stopped supporting Pro in favor of development of their Expression Engine software several years ago.

At this point, I’ve got it narrowed down to three server-based CMS packages - b2evolution, Expression Engine, and Movable type.  All three have good comment spam blocking tools, all can handle posts with multiple categories (a long running minor annoyance with PMachine Pro) and subcategories, all three are extendable with plugins to add functionality, and all three have at least one API for posting.  b2evolution is free, which is a big plus, but there is very little to differentiate it from Movable Type.  In fact, in the two different scoring methods I’ve used to date, they’re within .5 of each other.  Expression Engine is ahead with the current scoring method, but it also has the highest startup cost.

Since my wife is seriously interested in contributing to the new site when it’s up and running, her scores will matter too.  Ease of use will probably matter more to her than to me, so that’ll be key.  But ultimately, since I plan to add Google’s AdSense advertisements immediately and will probably broaden the number of authors beyond Jennifer and myself, these factors, and maybe the commercial license pricing too, play into the decision.

We’ll see what happens.  But at least I now have it down to three.  That’s a lot better than the two dozen it started at.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

General Update

You know, it’s only Thursday, but it feels like Friday.  Probably because I’ve put in nearly a full week’s work thus far, and nearly 12 hours on Tuesday.  It’s no fun going in to work after dinner and getting home at around 10:30 PM.  But sometimes salaried jobs require these kinds of hours.  And if I do really well, the project is high-profile enough that I’ll get some serious name recognition for it.  And that’s hardly a bad thing.

I love meatloaf.  Meatloaf gets almost as bad a rap as fruitcake.  Now, my favorite kind is my wife’s, and she makes it with ground turkey, onion soup mix, and lots and lots of garlic.  Yummy!

And I’ve figured out the “best” way to structure the new “blog” I’ve been working on so it’s easily expandable if/when I get enough hits to justify gradual expansion.  Totally new directory structures with non-standard names to make it harder for comment spam to get through, and a wholly independent install of the PMachine software should make it much easier to do long-run, and to migrate should I ever get enough money from click-ads to pay for a separate account and domain.