The Rest of the Story

Posted by on October 3rd, 2005 No comments

Well I had almost forgotten what it was like to have a newborn in the house. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that takes some getting used to again.

In my haste, I only managed to put up some basic information about Taylor’s birth. As you all know, however, every birth has a story. Taylor’s story was, to say the least, a whirlwind of events.

For about two weeks up to the 21st, Tabitha insisted that I bring her phone with me to class in case she went into labor while I was getting my brain stuffed. I kept it on “Silent” at all times, and since I wasn’t used to carrying a phone with me, I usually forgot to check it for missed calls before coming home. By some miracle, I remembered to check it on that afternoon, discovering that Tabitha was experiencing severe pain and needed me to drive her to the hospital.

Both of us were almost certain it would be a false alarm. We figured the doctors would examine Tabitha and the baby, tell us we’re silly, and just send us back home. To stay on the safe side, though, they wanted her to come in and get checked anyway.

I was so certain it was a false alarm that I went ahead and went to work at 4pm after I got her settled into the hospital. My mom was there to take Tabitha back home and me, being a guy, would have only been in the way had I stayed. Now imagine my utter surprise when I was at work and got a message at 5:30 that the baby was going to be delivered early.

I made it to the hospital just in time to throw on some scrubs and get briefed on what I had missed. It turns out that Tabitha’s pains were indeed labor pains, and her doctor had decided to go ahead and perform the C-section instead of inhibiting the labor.

At 6:14, our family was blessed with a new little girl a week before we were expecting her. I think Tabitha was quite relieved to have the pregnancy over with and thankful that she wasn’t in labor for 21 hours like she was with Kristopher.

So that’s it. A Wednesday that began normally and ended with a welcome addition to the family. We thank everyone for their support and many gifts. We are thankful that we have so many loving friends and family.

New Addition

Posted by on September 25th, 2005 No comments

The Myers Family Welcomes:
Taylor Callista Myers

Born:
September 21st, 2005 – 6:14pm CST

Weight:
5lbs. 15oz.
Length:
18.5in.

intMyersFamily++;

Directing Ourselves Away From Directories

Posted by on September 13th, 2005 1 comment

Well, after trying out several unsuccessful configurations aimed at managing my bookmarks, I’ve finally embraced that which is del.icio.us. It’s the only free solution that provides the mobility I’ve been looking for.

It’s taken me some time to get used to the whole “social” part of social bookmarking, but I think it’s finally grown on me. I’ve even managed to find several useful links on occasions when boredom drove me to browse the links posted by other users. The only major pain was importing and categorizing the 250+ links I had already amassed over the last few years, but on the positive side I did manage to weed out several that were broken and unused.

The ability to assign multiple categories to links is what really makes del.icio.us stand out for me. When I was still using a directory structure to categorize links, there were several times when I couldn’t decide whether a particular link belonged in one category or another. Inevitibly, when I came back to look for it later, I would have to browse at least 3 different folders to find out which one I put it in.

I’ve found that I have this same problem with folders on my machine. I tend to be a file packrat, so there’s quite a bit of stuff in there. There are times with the limitations of the underlying Windows directory structure hinder my ability to organize my files. I haven’t tried the beta yet, but Windows Vista is supposed to provide a whole new level of file organization that circumvents the inherent limitations of directories. I’m not sure if that means you can assign multiple categories to files or not, but certainly any step in that direction would be useful indeed.

At any rate, you can scope out my most current bookmarks by going to del.icio.us/synthetik.

___
Random Thought: What happens when you’re so out of it you can’t even spell “dictionary.com”?

Not a Day of Labor at All

Posted by on September 6th, 2005 No comments

Well another beautiful Labor Day has drawn to a close and for the first time in a few years, we didn’t do much but clean the house and enjoy some quiet time together as a family. With gas prices as they are, I’m sure we weren’t the only family to spend the holiday at home instead of taking a trip somewhere.

Besides, the closer it gets to baby time, the more miserable Tabitha becomes. I’d hate to try to drag her out somewhere at a time like this. She’s reached the point where she’s ready to have it over with, and it could very well be soon, seeing as Kristopher came about 4 weeks early. We even joked a bit about going into labor on Labor Day.

As for me, I’m only a week and a half into classes, and already I was welcoming the three-day weekend. As my last post so accurately predicted, this semester will indeed be an exercise in time management. For the curious, here’s a quick rundown of my classes this semester:

  • CSC 232 (Programming in Visual Basic) – A programming class! I’ve wanted to learn VB for a while. Now I get to learn it for credit! For the record, I have never messed up a semester during which I took a programming class.
  • CSC 301 (Foundations of Computer Science I) – This basically boils down to being another math class (discrete math, to be exact), but at least it’s more directly relevant to programming than calculus.
  • CSC 405 (Computer Architecture) – This course actually couples quite well with my CSC 301 class, but it’s run with the assumption that its students have already completed CSC 301. Thankfully, the same professor teaches both classes this semester, and I’m not the only one taking both. This course comes with a lab where we get to design and build electrical circuits based on binary logic.
  • PSY 180 (General Psychology) – A relentlessly boring lecture class. I’ve taken it before, now I’m taking it again. We’ll see if I make it to the end of the semester this time.

Almost every day of the week, I have a two- to three-hour gap between two of my classes. I’ve already found that these gaps are great for finishing most of my homework, leaving very little work to take time doing at home. I hope this trend continues after our little girl is born, because I doubt I’ll be able to concentrate on things as well with a newborn in the house. Besides, who would want to work on homework when there’s a new baby to hold?

It’s been stressful trying to settle into this new routine, but hopefully soon I’ll find my rhythm. All I know is that I’m am not planning on letting this semester slip away from me like so many before. Making the Dean’s List last semester certainly helped boost my confidence in myself that I can do this stuff and do it well. I should have graduated years ago, and kick myself every time I think of all the time I squandered. At least I seem to be back on track now.

A Collection of Chaos

Posted by on August 10th, 2005 2 comments

Well it seems that our household continues to get busier as the family ramps up toward a new baby and I prepare for another semester of classes at Murray State. I used to find all kinds of time to write near the beginning of the summer, but anymore it seems that I’m barely able to manage an update a month.

I suppose I’ll start my recap with our most exciting news: Kristopher is now potty trained! I find myself unable to form the words to express how proud of him we are right now. It’s certainly a notable milestone for us all. Tabitha and I are also very excitied that we won’t have to touch another stinky diaper until late September, when we get to start the entire process anew.

/sigh. Such is life. :)

I’m also happy to report that Tabitha’s pregnancy is progressing steadily with no known complications, for which we are very thankful. I have great difficulty trying to fathom the discomfort of carrying a child in the womb, much less the discomfort when the final trimester falls in the hot, humid summer months characteristic of Western Kentucky. She’s kept a positive attitude in light of it all and remains a shining example of how deep down, women truly are stronger than men in many respects.

So what have I been doing as she sits there and suffers? Goofing off as much as I can get away with, of course! I’ve been spending these last few weeks of free time trying to extract every possible trace of fun I can before I end up locking myself back down into academic mode.

I’m already quite anxious to get back into class. I’ve enjoyed my abundance of free time, but time away from school certainly doesn’t put a degree in my hands any quicker.

I’ll be trying out a new work/school balance this semester, with the recent change in my work schedule being the main difference. Last semester, my work hours were concentrated entirely on Saturdays and Sundays. I now work three eight-hour days on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings.

Spreading my hours over three days instead of two should help me better cope with work, but it will also force me to manage my time more effectively. I already miss having those five days off work in a row, but I certainly enjoy having my weekends back as compensation.

I seem to remember mentioning Kristopher’s terrible itchy, puffy, red skin rash in my last post, which we had all hoped was just an isolated outbreak. Regrettably, it has come back with a vengeance, despite treatments of Benadryl and prescription steroids from the doctor. Try as we may, we have yet to determine the cause of it. We still don’t know if it is a contact-based allergic reaction, an allergic reaction to some type of food or additive, or something else entirely.

All I know is that it has been causing us all a disparaging amount of grief. We humbly ask for your prayers as we try to deal with this on top of everything else going on. It’s making Kristopher very miserable and just getting him to take his medicine has been an uphill battle. We’d give anything just to somehow relieve him of it, as it pains us to see him suffer.

As always, I hope those of you who visit this site are doing well. I know I don’t stay in contact with most of you as well as I feel I should, and for that I apologize. I suppose I continue to write these news posts in an attempt to reach you all at once, because I’m lazy like that. :)