Unresolved References

Move along... nothing to see here

2006-09-20T00:35:00.000-04:00

My blog has moved to my new blog over at downsyn.com Click here to visit the new place....

About books

2006-09-12T00:13:00.000-04:00

The very lovely and talented Debra over at deblog and book-blog is sponsoring a contest to win a free book! All you have to do is answer a bunch of questions about books and then tag three people before September 30th. Now that I host a bunch of blogs I have plenty of people to tag! Ha ha! Now my evil plot can finally be revealed!

The book is an autographed copy of John Shors's historical novel Beneath a Marble Sky. Click on the book to read Debra's review.

1. What are you reading now?

The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War by Jaroslav Hašek. Hašek is one of the most famous Czech writers other than Kafka, of course. A friend in the Czech Republic had mentioned the book to me. Hašek was sort of an odd bird and it would be worth reading a biography about him if someone would write one! ;)

2. What's the best book you've read this year?

This hasn't been a great year for reading but I would probably say 1776 by David mcCullough even though parts of it felt like it was written by a committee and could have used some editing for grammar!

3. What's your favorite work of historical fiction?

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. This really was a book that I could not put down. It is not anything like Follet's regular genre which is spy novels. This story takes place in the 12th century and involves the building of a cathedral. Sounds dull? It isn't! Almost 1,000 pages and when I was done I wished it hadn't ended.

4. Pick a random book from your shelves and write down its first sentence. Does it make you want to read more?

"On the first day of Februray 1328 King Charles IV of France, third son of King Philip the Handsome and last of the Capetian dynasty, lay dying."

Pretty good first sentence for a book about the Hundred Years War (by Desmond Seward) and it does make me want to read more.

5. Have you ever read a book and wished that you'd written it? What was it?

Yes! Lots of books. I wish I was an historian so I could write like Shelby Foote. Or that I could write novels like Umberto Eco.

6. What book on your shelves do you wish you'd never bought?

Genius by James Gleick. But only because I feel guilty about never reading it.

7. Have you ever bought someone a book for BAFAB?

Yes. I bought a book for Beth but I can't recall what it was! Maybe it was To Kill a Mockingbird. I bought it for her but I can't remember when.

8. What book do you really wish someone would buy you for BAFAB?

non-fiction: Redemption by Nicholas Lemann
fiction: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.

9. Go to book-blog.com and leave a comment mentioning your post. Remember to include your permalink in the comment.

Done!

10. Tag three people.

I tag Stephanie, Amy, and Ali. Maybe this will get Ali to blog!

Another blog

2006-09-11T22:18:00.000-04:00

I have been blogging on my web site since I installed blogging software that integrates with my forum. I'm not sure if I should be repeating my entries here or if I will abandon this blog. Or maybe keep them separate? The thing I like about the blog on my site is that I completely control the software. Plus it lets me host blogs for my members which is really cool. This shows the flexibility of the new forum software that I am using now, phpbb2.

My new blog.

Does it hurt?

2006-08-25T13:28:00.000-04:00

It was her knee this time. And the answer is, "no, it didn't while in recovery" and "yes, it does now".

Michel in recovery

2006-08-25T13:26:00.000-04:00

The surgery went very well and Michel is feeling better than she has in a long time. We should be home in about an hour.

The house is too quiet

2006-08-24T17:22:00.000-04:00

Mikey isn't home. And the house is way too quiet. He is away at camp until Sunday. No therapists. No aides. Just Beth bouncing around the family room playing Dance, Dance Revolution and Michel and me trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.

On Tuesday, we took Mikey to his school to meet the bus to go up to the camp. They use these big buses with fancy seating and ceiling mounted DVD players etc. like you take when you go to Atlantic City. Last year when we took him to the bus, we couldn't get him on. He was crying and kicking and we finally decided to just drive him up to the camp. This year he was a trooper. He didn't want to get out the car when we arrived at the school so I had to carry him but he didn't cry at all when I carried him on the bus. He just sat down, crossed his legs, smiled, and looked out the window. He gave me a big kiss goodbye and that was it. We left him on the bus, Michel cried a little, and we went home.

Michel called the camp last night to check on Mikey and they said he had a great day. When they arrived, he didn't want to get off the bus, not because he didn't want to to go to the camp but because he had such a great time on the bus! He was the first up yesterday morning and had everyone outside to play soccer (or as the director who is from Wales calls it, football) by 7 AM. He even ate in the cafeteria without any trouble, sitting with the rest of the campers. The director told Michel that she sees a lot of growth and maturity in Mikey since last year.

I miss my little guy, even though a little break is good for everyone, especially since tomorrow Michel is having surgery on her knee. Yep, that's right. I'll blog more about the surgery tomorrow.

On my iPod...

2006-08-21T19:48:00.000-04:00

Here Comes Your Man by The Pixies. Stupid song (according to Beth) on my iPod: I Melt with You by Modern English.

An off day...

2006-08-21T16:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a bad day for me. Every once in awhile I get these days where my pulse or blood pressure drops and I'm just not myself. I spent a lot of the day confused about what exactly was going on and drifting in and out, if that makes any sense. Apparently I said something that really upset Michel and she slept on the couch. The weird part is that I have no memory of this whatsoever. I remember trying to get Mikey to sleep (he didn't fall asleep until 2 hours after his bed time) and I remember Michel being annoyed at me about something but then it's all just a blank. I feel much more myself today although I'm still a bit tired, almost like a mild hangover. For those of you who don't know, I have Vasovagal Syncope, although it has been a year since I actually passed out.

No more braces!

2006-08-19T00:18:00.000-04:00

Thursday was a big a day for Beth. The braces that she has had for the last 2.5 years are gone. Her teeth are nice and straight and beautiful. Even her orthodontist was impressed at what good care Beth took of her teeth while she had the braces on. She had the braces taken off first thing in the morning so I told her she could stay home from camp but she wanted to show everyone. I'll give a shout out to Dr. Michael Katz in Plainview for anyone who is looking for an orthodontist. Beth has a retainer that she is supposed to wear at night that will help keep her teeth straight and she has been very good about wearing it so far. The best part is that Beth can now start high school without braces. How cool is that?

Two months!

2006-08-16T21:48:00.000-04:00

I'm not depressed. Really. I'm just drained. I feel like the energy has been sucked out of me. I have been very busy at work and things are crazy at home (Michel needs surgery on her knee... more on that in a future blog entry) and I just feel like I'm worn down. It's not that I'm tired. I have been taking Ambien and have been sleeping great and usually wake up alert. I just feel... drained. I'm not sure how else to describe it. I haven't even felt like doing the things that I normally enjoy. I haven't felt like blogging or reading blogs or even reading. I looked in Bloglines and I had about 2,000 entries from the-deblog that were unread. But I'm starting to feel better. Perhaps now that Michel has a firm diagnosis and I know that her knee will be fixed, I feel better. Or maybe I just have finally got tired of letting things suck the life out of me. Anyway, I have lots of things to catch up on and I'll start by re-starting The Good Soldier Svejk tonight. And I think I'll go to the library tomorrow and see if they have DVD to learn Czech.

Notes from the Cat House

2006-06-16T10:20:00.000-04:00

We have always had cats. When Michel and I married she had two cats, Bowie and Bounder. They both lived until they were 18. Cats do pretty well with us because we keep them indoors and take good care of them. Biggles (left) was a cat I found outside a bar when she was a kitten. She was a scrawny little thing covered in fleas (which she gave to the Bowie and Bounder). She was a funny cat and had psychological problems. She once lived in our basement for 3 months because she decided she was terrified of Bowie. We even had her on Prozac for a little while!

Anyway, Biggles was getting old (she was about 18). She had been staying in our bedroom almost all the time lately and didn't seem to be her normal self. And then one day about 6 weeks ago she disappeared and we haven't seen her since. Cats tend to go off by themselves when they are sick so we think Biggles may have sneaked out to find a quiet place to die. Bounder had done that when her kidneys failed but her quiet place was in the basement in Beth's old baby carriage. Anyway, she was an annoying and insane cat but we loved her and will miss her.

We now have four cats. Malibu, Kokie, Inky, and Tuttle. Malibu and Kokie were adopted from the animal shelter a couple of years ago. Malibu was dumped by her previous owners because she has a heart problem and they didn't want to take care of her. She's a grumpy old cat but gets along great with my daughter. Kokie is a younger, long-haired cat who likes to sleep on top of the TV. We got Inky back in November. He is the first male cat we have ever had. We got him as a little kitten from Mikey's Physical Therapist who had found the kittens in her back yard. Inky is the friendliest cat we have ever had. Inky and the dog are best friends and chase each other around the house. The dog likes to clean Inky which means Inky usually smells like a dog. Tuttle is a tiny little kitten that had been left outside of our vet's office. He took care of them until they were old enough to be adopted. Tuttle and her siblings were so tiny they had to be bottle fed. So we now have four cats and a dog. And Michel wants another dog!

What People Are Made Of

2006-06-12T11:30:00.000-04:00

I got banned from posting comments on a blog. Why? Why would someone ban me, a perfectly harmless guy? Because I had the nerve to defend four women whose husbands were murdered by terrorists. Let me explain. Dawn Eden has a blog in which she discusses mostly her recent conversion to Catholicism and her hatred of Planned Parenthood. She's a friend of Michel's cousin Kevin so I generally follow her blog. She recently wrote a blog entry that attacked four women whose husbands died on 9/11. These women call themselves The Jersey Girls and try to use whatever notoriety that they have to promote issues and candidates that they believe will reduce the likelihood that others will suffer the way they have. Ann Coulter recently wrote a book in which she attacks these women, mostly because she doesn't like their politics. Ann Coulter is, mostly, a shill for Ann Coulter and has become very wealthy being nasty and cruel. Dawn quotes from Coulter's book and then makes the bizarre claim (one not even Coulter tried to make) that these four widows claim to be non-partisan and apolitical. She then goes on to say that this makes them hypocrites.

It's hard enough to lose someone you love and planned to spend the rest of your life with and then to be told that you are a witch for trying to use his death to prevent the death's of others. But to be told that you are a hypocrite is worse! Coulter is mostly just expressing her twisted opinion. Dawn is actually telling lies. I could not let that stand. I had to comment on Dawn's blog. What I told her was that what she wrote was a serious sin. For that she banned me.

As bad as that was, Dawn then called cousin Kevin to complain about me! Imagine the chutzpah to try to come between family members over something as trivial as a blog! What is especially weird about this is that Dawn writes for the NY Daily News. You would think that someone who writes for a newspaper would have a little spine and would be able to take some criticism. Dawn, apparently, only wants people who agree with her to read her blog.

Which brings to me one other thought. Why would Ann Coulter make the claim that The Jersey Girls are enjoying their widowhood? "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." The only explanation that comes to my mind is the psychological term, projection. Coulter has probably never loved anyone (other than herself) enough to feel the pain that these women do. Coulter has probably never been so in love that she would give up everything for another. That is probably why she thinks that a few million dollars should make the pain go away... because it would for her.

Buy American?

2006-06-06T12:29:00.000-04:00

I was reading the NY Times on Sunday and there was an article about the American automotive industry. The article talked about how GM has lost ground in the automotive sales world. At one time the Impala was the number one car in the world but today that title belongs to a Japanese car, the Toyota Corolla. The article discussed how the US automotive industry has concentrated on SUVs and has lost ground to the Japanese car manufacturers who concentrate their engineering efforts on just a few models and try to make those few models the best that they can. GM spreads their efforts to many car models across several brands thus preventing them from concetrating their engineering efforts. It was all fascinating but the one thing that made me laugh had to do with the definition of American vs. Japanese cars. As it turns out, the number one American passenger car is manufactured in Canada. The number one Japanese passenger car is manufactured in the USA. So which Americans are your car dollars going to? If you buy an "American" car, your money is going to wealthy American executives and if you buy a "Japanese" car, your money is going to middle-class American auto workers.

PocketMod: Better than a PDA

2006-06-05T12:23:00.000-04:00

Debra over at Deblog posted about the PocketMod, an incredibly simple and yet useful way to keep notes. The problem with a PDA or even a DayTimer is that they are bulky and hard to carry around. If I run into a co-worker in the hall and she says, "Why don't you join us at our meeting tomorrow at 2:00," the likely response is to ask her to send an email to remind me (and she might forget) or to write it down on a scrap of paper that I will promptly misplace. Or I might be out at lunch and suddenly get the feeling that I am forgetting a meeting but have no way to look it up to see when and where the meeting is being held. The Pocketmod has none of these problems because it is easy to carry around, disposable when you are done with it and best of all, free.

So how does the PocketMod work? Simple. It's as easy to carry and use as a piece of paper because... it is a piece of paper! Simply, it is a piece of paper that is organized by adding components such as a calendar or shopping list to it and then folding it a certain way so that it fits easily in your pocket or wallet. There are components such as day and week planners, diaries, to-do lists, reference cards, food diaries for dieters, and even SuDoku! You simply pick the eight components you want on your page, print it out, fold it, and stick it in your pocket. If you lose it, you can just make another. This thing is so simple that it is brilliant!

Always Wear Seatbelts

2006-05-25T17:02:00.000-04:00

My neice, Alexandra, was involved in a car accident this past weekend. She was with some friends driving back to school in Maryland from a weekend in Delaware. It was about 5AM when the driver fell asleep (alcohol was not involved) and let the car (a 1992 Nissan Pathfinder) drift into a drainage ditch along the side of the road. The car flipped and rolled. Alex has a compression fracture of one of her vertebrae and may need surgery to fuse the bones. The driver has severe chest trauma (no air bags) including a broken sternum and had to have his spleen removed. The person sitting next to Alex has a head injury. The young lady who was sitting next to the driver has a bruise on her pinkie. She was the only one wearing her seatbelts.

The Good Times are Killing Me

2006-05-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

Beth made it home Saturday night but not without mishaps. She was supposed to pull in around 11PM, but the bus broke down in the middle of Vermont. It was actually the other bus that broke down (there were two buses for the trip) but their bus waited for the other bus to get replaced. Yep, they had to wait for the bus company to send a new bus to replace the broken down bus. Meanwhile the kids were out of food and battery power for their iPods and cell phones so there was almost a mutiny. And communication from the chaperones with the parents was non-existent. If Beth hadn't called us we wouldn't have known that the bus was going to be late. In fact, we didn't get an official call about the bus being late until 11:30 PM, a half hour after the bus was supposed to arrive. They finally pulled in a little after 1:30 AM. Beth was tired, hungry, and a little cranky. So we fed her and chased her off to bed. She slept just about all of Sunday with just a 45 minute break to come down and get something to eat. I didn't get to bed until about 3AM Saturday night so I was pretty cranky myself on Sunday. Michel must be a saint to put up with us!

I should add that other than that one of the girls Beth was with got homesick on Saturday and didn't want to do anything, the trip was a major success. They had fun, learned some French, ate lots of good food, danced on a party boat, and shopped, shopped, shopped. So all in all, it was a great trip. Next week she's off to Pennsylvania with her class for two days. This girl travels more than I do!

Perfect Weather

2006-05-18T14:12:00.000-04:00

I hope Beth is having the same weather we are.

Quebec City

2006-05-17T17:37:00.000-04:00

Beth changed her hair color from purple to turqoise and I was going to put a picture of it on the blog but she ran off to Quebec City! Actually, she left at 6:30 this morning on a school trip to Quebec. This was sponsored by her French class. This is the first time that Beth will be away from us for anything other than overnight so this is a huge deal for for us but especially for Michel because she is the mom. I spoke to Beth earlier today (actually she sent me a text message) and she was in Vermont. The trip is a little over 10 hours by bus. Of course, the buses are those fancy tour buses like the ones you take when you go to Atlantic City. To go on the trip she had to be at the school at 6AM, which means she had to wake up at 5 AM. How excited about the trip is she? I didn't even have to wake her up! She came in and woke me up at 4:55! Anyway, I am sure this is going to be a fantastic time for Beth and will provide her with memories that she will treasure for the rest of her life.

The Not So Special Olympics

2006-05-08T09:42:00.000-04:00

Before I start I just want to say right up front that I know that everyone's heart is in the right place and I don't mean to sound mean or ungrateful but...

Mikey's gym teacher at AHRC thought that Mikey could participate in a couple of events in the Special Olympics. We thought that this was a fantastic idea and would be a lot of fun. It turned out to be a fantastic idea but not a lot of fun.

The school where the Olympics are being held doesn't have a very big parking lot but they arranged to use the parking lot of a corporate park and bus everyone over to the school. This was actually well organized. We get to the school and the bus drops us off. But they drop us off on one side of the school but the path to the track where the events are being held is on the other side of the school. Not a big deal except that Michel's parents are with us and he has a bad heart and chronic bronchitis and she has a bad knee. Then we realize that you have to walk down a huge hill to get down to the field. OK, so here we are at Special Olympics and the field is poorly accesible? Maybe this location wasn't a good choice to hold the events.

Anyway, we get down there and they assign three very nice girls to help with Mikey. They are all high school seniors and they are all volunteers. The only problem is that they have had no training, no explanation of what is expected of them, no idea how to handle a child with autism. They mostly just follow me around. So we get where we are supposed to be with a few minutes to spare before the parade is supposed to start. Michel, Beth, and Michel's parents are waiting in the stands while Mikey, the girls, and I are waiting for the parade into the main area to start. And we wait. And we wait. And if I tell you that Mikey is not good at waiting would you be surprised? We waited for an hour and Mikey is bored, tired (we had to wake him up early to be there on time), and misses his nana and pop-pop. Finally we march in and they want us to stand in the middle of the field and listen to a bunch of local politicians give speeches! At this point I am ready to scream and while Mikey is doing his best to be good this is asking a huge amount from a 9 year old boy.

So Mikey and I just wander off to where we think his event will be. Michel finds us and steers us into the right direction. We get there about the time the National Anthem is playing but they are still not ready for Mikey's first event, the 50 meter dash. I am exhausted because Mikey mostly wants to be carried everywhere plus my back and right knee are killing me. Mikey is tired, bored, and ready to go home. Finally, someone shows up with lists of names on multiple pieces of paper but they are the wrong list and he wants everyone to line up. Mikey sits in the chair next to him and hits him.

The problem appears to be that he has no clue how to handle children with disabilites. He seems to expect a bunch of children with autism to neatly line up and follow his instructions while he looks up names on a bunch of lists. One woman told us that the events she has been to, they just line up all the kids and have them run and worry about names later. They are making this very difficult for the kids by dragging it out and wasting whatever ability to keep themselves under control that they have. Finally we just decide that we have all reached our limit and we call it quits. Mikey gladly went over to nana and gave her a huge hug and then he sat on her lap and put his head on her chest.

Getting out was another problem. Remember the hill we had to walk down to get to the field? Well now we had to walk up that hill. Michel's father made it about half way up and just ran out of gas. There were a lot of EMT's with wheelchairs around so she went to ask if one of them could help him up the hill. Meanwhile Mikey and I kept going and we ended up on a bus heading back to the parking lot. Mikey jumped on the first empty bus but the driver wanted to get back to the parking lot to pick up some people in wheelchairs (it was a wheelchair accessible bus) so were on our way before anyone else caught up to us.

The EMT's deciced that they didn't want to help Michel's father because they were only there for emergencies! So if he had a heart attack walking up the hill they might do something but to prevent him from having a heart attack we were on our own. Jerks! Anyway, Michel's father did manage to walk up the hill by taking his time and stopping a few times to catch his breath.

When we got home we had a nice family party for Mikey's First Olympics. So overall our first Special Olympics experience was less than we were hoping for. Hopefully, next time will be better.

Ow!

2006-05-05T11:55:00.000-04:00

This is what you get when you let a klutz use a hammer.

Modest Mouse

2006-05-02T13:03:00.000-04:00

When we were out shopping at Tower records on Sunday, I spotted this album by Modest Mouse. I had heard of them from somewhere and had picked up the album to buy it about half a dozen times but never pulled the trigger. I asked Beth if she had ever heard of them and she said they are a good indie group and she had bought one of their songs on iTunes. So I bought the album. It isn't for everyone. They are different and probably would scare off a lot of people. The "hit" song from the album, Float On, is not typical of the songs on the album so if you had heard it on fuse I would recommend listening to a few of their songs on iTunes or Amazon before buying. I am enjoying it and it would be in my CD player except I'm driving the van (Michel is driving the Volvo) so I don't have a CD player! Arghhh!

Shopping with the gang

2006-04-30T15:54:00.000-04:00

This time I took Mikey shopping with the girls. It went pretty well.

Flying Saucer!

2006-04-29T19:30:00.000-04:00

Mikey and I spotted a UFO while we were waiting for mommy. Do you think we should call NASA?

Mikey gets a haircut

2006-04-29T19:16:00.000-04:00

We had a busy day. First we got Mikey a haircut and then we went to music therapy. For the first time ever Mikey was well behaved while getting his hair cut. The woman who cuts his hair was in shock as she usually gets a workout.

Satan's spawn

2006-04-28T11:44:00.000-04:00

These little flowers piled on my car are from maple trees. I am very allergic to them. They are everywhere right now and they give me pounding headaches.

The maple tree is very common on Long Island and its reproductive cycle occurs before it produces leaves. At this time of the spring, the maple trees are all covered in yellow flowers so heavily that it looks like the trees have all their leaves. But in fact there are no leaves, just the little yellow flowers pumping out clouds of pollen. The flowers then drop and the leaves start coming in. If my head didn't hurt so much I might actually enjoy it.

One fish, two fish...

2006-04-27T00:05:00.000-04:00

If you recall, two years ago I wrote about the success I had with my fish tank by leaving it alone. I have had continued success with this policy as I haven't had a single fish die in the last two years. But you can't leave it alone forever so a couple of weeks ago I gave it a full cleaning and threw away the old plastic sunken ship and other junk. But keeping in mind what I learned I didn't go overboard with cleaning the filter so that the bacteria would be able to quickly return to do their job.

While we were at the pet store this past weekend (see below), we bought a bunch of new fish since the tank was fairly sparse. The new fish have adapted quickly and all the fish look like they like the tank and are enjoying their home and each other. I also bought a realistic Greek ruin as you can see in the picture. Think of it as the remains of Atlantis, only with lots of bubbles coming out of it.

Purple!

2006-04-26T23:44:00.000-04:00

As I had mentioned in an earlier entry, Beth was going to get her hair dyed purple. That happened this past weekend and it came out great. You can read the entire adventure over at downsyn.com.

Michel

2006-04-26T10:50:00.000-04:00

I really like this picture of Michel. This was taken the day Beth got her hair cut.

Shopping with Mikey

2006-04-24T11:35:00.000-04:00

We took Mikey to the pet store. He had a fun time looking at the dogs. Then he threw his coat in the Koi pond. ;-)

Spring Day

2006-04-24T11:34:00.000-04:00

All week we had beautiful weather and then it rained all weekend. How typical.

A new car

2006-04-19T15:33:00.000-04:00

We picked up our new car last night and we love it. It's a Volvo! When I say "new" I mean new to us. It is actually a certified pre-owned Volvo. I think that means that they certify someone owned it before us. It's a 2003 with 20,000 miles and we paid half of what a new Volvo S60 would have cost us. This is the first time that I ever owned a luxury car. The only problem is that Michel won't let me drive it. Our plan is to drive this car to Atlanta in July for the NDSC conference. Hopefully I won't have to wait until then to get a chance to drive it!

Beth gets a haircut

2006-04-19T15:27:00.000-04:00

Beth's hair was so long and straight that it made her face look drawn. Her new shorter style brings out her beauty. Saturday she gets her hair dyed purple.

Happy Birthday Mikey!

2006-04-16T21:47:00.000-04:00

Once again it is time for Mikey's Birthday. He turned 9 on Tuesday and what a day it was (more on that below). Anyway, this has been a great year for Mikey. He really has made huge steps forward. Between the new school, the changes in medication, and Mikey's hard work he has become so much more like a 9 year old boy should be.

The summary of my day: I take the day off so I can bring pizza and cupcakes to Mikey's class. So I get ready and I'm out the door. Call the pizza place and run over to the pharmacy to drop off a prescription for Mikey. Over to the bakery. It is packed. They are serving #17 and I'm #39. I forgot Passover starts tomorrow. Forget the cupcakes. Let's get Munchkins from Dunkin' Dounuts. 3 minutes in and out. Super. Off to the pizzaria and then to the school. Phone is ringing. Beth's school. Beth is short of breath... please bring her medication. Run up to Mikey's school because I'm almost there. Mikey sees me and looks mad. Not too bad though as he shoves a couple of things and then races over to the pizza boxes and smiles. Give the digital camera to the teacher and I'm out the door. Stop at home, grab the medicine, and head to Beth's school. Phone again. It's the Vet. The dog has hookworms. Come and get medicine. OK, be right over. Get to the school and sit with Beth while she takes her medicine. Nurse gives me a form to give to the doctor so Beth can bring her medicine to school. You OK, Beth? Yep. I'm off to the vet. Pick up medicine and run home. Have to stop at Starbuck's. Pick up Mikey's medicine from the pharmacy while I'm there. Stop at home and check the website. Wow! Look at all the birthday greetings for Mikey! Fax the form to Beth's doctor. Now off to Mikey's school to bring him to the psychiatrist (wonder if he gives family rates) for followup and to check Mikey's medications. Finish with the psychiatrist and it's off to pick up Beth because she is staying late at school. Phone's ringing. OK, Beth. We're on our way to get you. Off to home, drop off Beth and on to the dentist. Two hours of peace as I get my teeth whitened. Funny, I almost felll asleep in the chair. Home, put Mikey to bed and collapse. What a fun day off!

Who would have guessed?!

2006-04-15T10:33:00.000-04:00

You Are 62% Evil

You are very evil. And you're too evil to care. Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

How Evil Are You?

Spring Thunderstorm

2006-04-13T21:21:00.000-04:00

Waiting for music therapy

2006-04-08T15:16:00.000-04:00

Mikey waiting for music therapy. This was our second Saturday session. He used to go after school during the week but I think he is much more alert and ready to have fun on Saturday. As always, John C. has been just great with him.

Show us your papers

2006-03-22T09:39:00.000-05:00

Well, now we know the purpose of the Patriot Act... it is to protect us from grandmothers riding on buses.

The story is a little old but worth repeating for those who missed it.

Deborah Davis lives in Colorado. She is a grandmother with a son fighting in Iraq. Every day she takes the bus to work. The bus happens to go through a federal facility in order to drop off federal employees. When the bus pulls into the facility, a guard comes on the bus and demands to see identification. Ms. Davis doesn't think that American citizens riding on public buses should have to show ID, so she refuses to produce proof of identity. So two guards grab her, handcuff her, and cart her off to the guard station... and then wonder "what now?" What do you do when a harmless grandmother refuses to show you her driver's license. They ended up giving her two tickets for minor infractions and sending her off. Eventually all the charges were dropped but the government refused to do away with the policy. So the end result is that the bus company is going to change the routes so that the buses don't go through the facility. It would make much more sense for the guards to check the ID's of people getting off the bus instead of harassing American citizens who just want to get to work. And does anyone really think that asking people on the bus for ID is making anyone at the federal facility safer?

Death to Converts

2006-03-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

From Karl Keating...

Abdul Rahman is 41 and may not make it to 42. The Afghani converted to Christianity, and that is a crime in a country that operates under Sharia.

Rahman is under arrest in Kabul, and the prosecutor wants him executed for abandoning Islam. Rahman has been told his life will be spared if he converts back to Islam, but so far he has declined the offer. He has a real chance of becoming a martyr for the faith.

As we wait to see what happens to him, it would be a courtesy to have silence from those who keep telling us that Islam is a religion of peace.

She just gets more and more beautiful

2006-03-21T22:42:00.000-05:00

How Mikey sleeps

2006-03-21T07:16:00.000-05:00

Here's another one of Mikey. Try this one if you dare. (1) Sit on the bed with your legs crossed as if you were doing yoga. (2) Fall straight ahead until your head is on the bed. (3) Start snoring. I would need surgery if I attempted to sleep that way.

Notice that his pajamas are pulled up over his knees and that he is sleeping on top of his blankets. We put him under the blankets at one point but he won't stay under them.

I started a conversation about sleep positions on Downsyn.com and it seems like a lot of our kids like to sleep folded in half.

Shopping with the girls - Part 2

2006-03-19T13:45:00.000-05:00

I went shopping with the girls again but this time Michel came too!

It was another shopping day with the girls and Michel was feeling better so she decided to come along. Michel's parents are staying with us so they watched Mikey while we went off on our little adeventure. Beth and Irene are addicted to CD shopping so we went to the same two stores for CDs that we went to last week. We added side trips to a bookstore and to a pet store. The pet store was giving away cats so I was lucky to get out of there without taking a cat home with us. We went to Applebee's for lunch and then to Starbuck's for dessert. After, we brought Irene home with us and the two girls went upstairs to Beth's room and listened to their CDs. Beth had a good day... I like to see her spend time with her friends because sometimes kids with disabled siblings become isolated from their peers. But I don't think there is any chance of that happening with Beth.

Felony Surfing?

2006-03-17T12:56:00.000-05:00

Back in October I asked about the ethics of piggy-backing on someone's unencrypted wireless network. A recent issue of WXPNews had an article dealing with just that question. The title caught my eye - Is Your Wireless Web Surfing Breaking the Law? I had some questions about the morality of wireless piggy-backing but the idea that it might be illegal didn't occur to me. The line in the article that caught my eye was: Last summer, a man in Florida was arrested on felony charges of unauthorized use of a wireless network when he sat in a parked car and connected to a WAP in another man's house. The story made big news when it happened but we've been trying to find out, with little luck, what the disposition was. A man was arrested for using someone else's wi-fi? I hope that there is more to this story than that!

Here is a little more detail but I haven't been able to find a resolution to this case - Man charged with wireless trespassing.

In a response to the article, one person wrote, "attaching to [another person's] network is less like trespassing on their property than it is like eating the apples that fell off their tree into your yard." I tend to feel this way too. Anyone who wants to use my unencrypted Wi-Fi network is welcome to it. In fact, I think we need universal, unencrypted Wi-Fi. The ability to access the internet from anywhere with any wireless device would be a huge boon for society. I expect to see it in my lifetime.

My new phone

2006-03-14T15:46:00.000-05:00

I finally treated myself and got a new phone with an iPod built in. Michel wanted to get a line on our family plan for her dad. He has prostate cancer so Michel wanted to make sure that he can always get in touch with us if he needs us. So I ordered a new line and got to pick a new phone. So I ordered a Motorola ROKR which is considered old now so I was able to get it a bargain price. The phone only holds 100 songs which is not a lot but I love it. I use it in the car with an adapter to hook it up to my car stereo and at work I use the headphones so I can get work done without being bothered by all the talk around me. There were complaints about this phone because it is a little bulky but I have big, fat fingers so I like a phone with a little "meat" to it.

Of course, nothing is ever easy so Cingular gave me nothing but headaches about getting the order processed. I placed the order over the web and everything seemed to go OK but then I got a note advising me that I had to call them. So I called and after clicking through a dozen prompts I got put on hold and sat waiting for 30 minutes ("due to unusual call volumes...blah blah blah" - if they are so unusual then why is that every time I call I get put on hold forever?). Finally I get a real person and they tell me I have a business account so I have to use the business site. A business account? Whatever. So I go to the business web site to place my order and guess what? You can't add a line to the family plan at the business web site. It tells me that you have to call to add a line. Arghhh! So I call and get put on hold for another 30 minutes. Finally I get a person and they tell me that the phone I want can't be ordered for a business account. Fine, I say, then make the account a non-business account. So they change the account but now they can't take my order because they are the business account person. He transfers me and guess what? Back on hold again. Finally I get a person but they can't get my account information so they advise me to place my order on the web again. So it's back to the Cingular web site where I place my order again.

Everything looks OK but then a couple of days later I get another email telling me that the order can't be placed and I need to fax them a copy of my driver's license and social security card. Now there is zero chance that I will fax those to anyone. Again I call and again I'm back on hold. When I finally get a person they can't help because they can't figure out why the order won't go through and they want to transfer me to someone else. At this point I lose it, tell them that Cingular sucks, and slam down the phone. I have been on hold for at least 2 and a half hours. So I send an email telling them how they suck at customer service. I work in customer service (I'm in IT but I run the customer facing web portal for Symbol) and I would never allow a customer to get this kind of treatment. We have a policy that the customer's problem is your problem and you need to take responsibility and get it fixed. When a customer calls I answer them right away or I get their phone number and call them back with an answer. I don't leave customers on hold. I wrote all this and a lot more in my email and guess what? The person responding fixed everything. They got my order taken care of and sent me a brand new phone instead of a refurbished one. Later, when I had a question about my bill, I skipped calling and went right to email. I got a response back the next day that was clear and accurate. Cingular needs to work on training their people on the phone to be as responsive as the people on the email.

Mikey's new bed

2006-03-14T11:32:00.000-05:00

We finally got Mikey a "big boy" bed. We had Mikey in a crib for the longest time, mostly because we were worried about him getting up in the middle of the night and wandering off. But he outgrew the crib so we got him a toddler bed from Ikea but he managed to break it. It had a guard rail and Mikey would sit in the bed and push the guard rail with his feet. The wood cracked and the whole bed came crashing down. So for the last couple of weeks Mikey has been sleeping on his mattress on the floor. I had asked Mikey what kind of bed he wanted, and he ran into his sister's room and pointed to her bed. Saturday, while Mikey was out at his socialization program, Michel and I went off to Ikea to buy Mikey a new bed and mattress (and a new mattress for Beth, too). Even in three separate boxes the thing weighed a ton but I managed to get it upstairs and spent the rest of the day putting it together.

When it was time for Mikey to go to bed, I brought him upstairs and he saw his new bed for the first time. You have heard the expression, "his jaw dropped"? Mikey's jaw dropped and he stared at the bed unbelieving what he saw. Then a huge smile came to his face and he jumped into his new bed. He was thrilled. We were worried that Mikey would fall out of the bed because he rolls around at night all over the place. While we had the mattress on the floor, we would find Mikey by the door or over by the closet, everywhere but on his mattress. So I took his old mattress and put it by the side of his bed. We needn't have worried. Mikey didn't come close to falling out of bed so we stopped using the mattress after the first night.

So now my big boy finally has a big boy bed. Next, a TV for his room. He deserves it!

Shopping with the girls

2006-03-12T13:57:00.000-05:00

Michel didn't feel well and Beth and her friend Irene wanted to go shopping so Dad volunteered to take them. We went CD shopping and Beth used a gift certificate she go on Christmas to load up on CDs. I took them to Applebee's for lunch and then we went to Starbuck's for cupcakes (I had a latte). It was fun but those two sure can talk. I don't think there was a moment of silence during the entire outing. In the picture, Irene is on the left and Beth is on the right.

More snow

2006-03-02T10:57:00.000-05:00

March has come in like a lion with sudden cold temperatures (below 20 degrees) and some snow. The weatherman screwed up though. They predicted more snow then what we got so I left work early to work from home. As it turned out, the snow stopped just a little while after I left work.

High Scool Daze

2006-02-09T12:21:00.000-05:00

High School starts for Beth in only a few short months and last night was the parent orientation to Freshman (Freshperson?) year. We got to meet the principal of the school and a couple of the guidance counselors. The idea of my little girl going into High School is a bit shocking. Only four more years to college and then career, marriage, children, etc. My little girl is growing up fast. It is a little sad in two ways. First, Beth is probably not going to appreciate how great high school can be. it is a time of growing up and becoming an adult without having to worry about real adult responsibilities and pressures. But without the ability to look back on it, Beth has nothing to compare it to. "I can't wait until I'm out of school!" Trust me on this one, Beth. You can wait. The second sad thing is that it is unlikely that Mikey will ever have the high school experience. His disability (the autism part of his disability) is simply too profound for him to be integrated into a regular school program. But Mikey will have his own experiences and we can only hope that they are as wonderful for him as we hope high school will be for Beth.

The religion of peace

2006-02-07T15:50:00.000-05:00

I hate to say I told you so but... The West and it's belief in justice, freedom, and equality is at war with Islam which believes in injustice, death, and destruction. Fortunately the only people getting killed so far are the rioters. Update: A Catholic priest was murdered in Turkey

The cartoons can be seen at Human Events Online.

Think hard about this... Iran possessing nuclear weapons!

A selection of signs from the protests: "Freedom Go to Hell"; "Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust"; "Europe, You Will Pay; Your 9/11 Is on Its Way"; "Behead Those Who Insult Islam"; "Butcher Those Who Mock Islam"; "Exterminate Those Who Slander Islam"; "Annihilate Those Who Insult Islam"; "As Muslims We Unite & Are Prepared to Fight"; "This Is the Beginning of the End for You Disbelievers."

See Michelle Malkin for more.

Update: I was reading the Sunday NY Times Book Review section when I came across this little gem from someone by the name of Lucy Ellmann (apparently a novelist) in a review of a book, The Thin Place by Kathyrn Davis: "I should declare immediately that I resent and fear Christinaity, not only for its sexism and incitement of violence but for its deadening effect on the imagination." OK, so the religion that led to the modern day world of freedom and justice is "feared and resented"? Apparently Ms. Ellmann is an idiot. If she is looking for a religion to fear and resent she should look at the ruins at the south end of Manhattan or try reading a newspaper (but not the NY Times which has refused to publish the cartoons).

Update: This was in the NY Times editorial section: "The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words." Let's be clear about what hog-wash this is... the NY Times had no trouble with publishing pictures of the painting of the Virgin Mary with elephant dung on her even though most Catholics saw the painting as a "gratuitous assaults on religious symbols". This is about cowardice and the NY Times has demonstrated that it has plenty of that.

Invader Zim

2006-01-17T19:03:00.000-05:00

Just before Christmas, Nickelodeon was running commercials for the Christmas episode of a show called Invader Zim. The commercials featured the show's Christmas song which ran like this:

Bow down!
Bow down!
Before the power of Santa
Or be crushed!
Be crushed
By his jolly boots of doom!

OK, so how are you supposed to resist that? Anyway, after watching the program I discovered (or should I say our entire family discovered) that Invader Zim is one of the most brilliant TV programs ever made. The concept of the story is rather simple... an Invader named Zim from the Irken Empire is sent to Earth to scout out the planet and report back ahead of the upcoming invasion. That's Zim (with the red eyes) watching TV with his useless robot servant, Gir, in the picture up top. The Irken Empire destroys other planets for fun and in order to get their snacks. Actually the Irken Empire has no intention of invading Earth but the Almighty Tallest (the rulers of the Irken Empire is whoever is the tallest) hate Zim (because he is a screw-up AND he is short) so they sent him to earth to get rid of him. Zim disguises himself as a 6th grader (I told you he is short) and disguises Gir as a dog (that's Gir in his dog suit). Dib is a 6th grader who realizes that the new green student is actually an alien intent on destroying Earth. Gaz is Dib's sister and her major goals in life are to win at video games and annoy Dib. That is the show and madness ensues from episode to episode. Whether it is Zim turning Dib into bologna, ("No one should be this delicious!") or whether it is Dib defeating Zim with water baloons ("Score one for the human race, score nothing for the Zim thingy race!"), every episode is pure nonsense and insanity.

Gir: Oh, I left it at home.
Zim: You left what at home?
Gir: The guidy, chipy, thingy.
Zim: Why would you do that?
Gir: To make room for the cupcake!

Update: Here's The Santa Song.

Beth is sick

2006-01-17T15:14:00.000-05:00

This has been a rough month for my daughter. She was dizzy at school and felt completely worn out so she went to the nurse and came home. She stayed home for a couple of days then went back but the same thing happened again. Off to the doctor and the doctor discovers that her spleen is enlarged. Yikes! That might mean mono! Off to the lab for a test, wait a couple of days, and the result is... not mono, in fact the tests reveal nothing of interest. Conclusion? An unspecified viral infection, maybe the same one that Michel has in her middle ear. We were back to the doctor today and things look better so anyway, tomorrow she goes back to school because she has missed enough.

Today was a hectic day. Michel was getting another pain shot so I had to take the morning off. But Mikey's bus was late. So I took Mikey and Michel over to the hospital, dropped Michel off, drove to Mikey's school, dropped him off, then went home, grabbed Beth and took her to the doctor, then went back to pick up Michel, and then took them both home, grabbed a Subway BLT with no "T" for Beth, then drove off to work. I got here at 1pm so I will be going home late tonight.

So how is Michel doing, you ask? Not too good. She thinks her shunt needs to be adjusted because she is not feeling right so she hasn't been back to work for a couple of weeks. And so it goes.

Geek Squad Sucks

2006-01-17T14:44:00.000-05:00

So they have cool little cars, impressive commercials, and wear nerdy looking clothes. They still suck. Twice I have gone to Geek Squad with a computer problem and twice I encountered a teenager who knows less about computers than I do. The first time was the disk problem... OK, I really didn't expect them to open up the disk and recover the data but I did expect them to make more than a minimal effort. In fact, the Geek Squad guy did nothing more than what I was able to do myself. He pulled the drive and put it in another PC where it still didn't work. Duh... I told him the disk was fried. I expected a little more like maybe swapping the electronics on the drive and seeing if that might do something. But that would have required some technical know-how and that does not seem to be what geek Squad is about.

OK, how about the second problem which happened last week with my daughter's PC. According to the lights on the back of the PC, the processor failed. So I called Geek Squad on the phone and they said, "Sure, no problem, bring it in, we can fix that." Well, actually after I dragged the PC over there I discovered that if I buy a new processor from Dell they will put it in for me. For $50. They wouldn't even bother checking the computer to make sure it really was the processor or even order the processor themselves. Putting in a processor may sound scary but if you can plug in a toaster without electrocuting yourself, you can put a new processor in a computer. It is about 5 minutes worth of work. So Geek Squad will be happy to put in the processor, with no guarantee that the processor is actually the problem, at the equivalent rate of $600 per hour. Nice work if you can get it.

They will install a hard drive at $40 (after you buy the hard drive). What does installing a new hard drive entail? Open the PC, slide the hard drive into a slot, and plug two cables into the hard drive. Close the PC and start her up. Less that 5 minutes work. They will install a memory chip for $30. Again, less than 5 minutes for you to do it yourself. They will install anti-virus software for $30 plus the cost of the software. Are you telling me that someone might own a computer and not know how to put a disk in their CD player because that is all Geek Squad will do for you. For $170 they will remove any viruses and spyware and add a firewall and some virus protection. $170!!! I cleaned up my sister's PC which was infected with both spyware and viruses without using anything other than some free anti-spyware software and 90-day free version of Norton.

Geek Squad is a rip-off. They charge outrageous amounts for the simplest work but are incapable of doing anything more than what anyone can do with just a little advice or assistance from a random teenager.

Backup Software

2005-12-31T22:16:00.000-05:00

So I went on a search for backup software and found NTI Shadow 2. The best part is that it only costs 99 cents (at least until midnight California time, New Year's Eve). So now I am backing up the "My Documents" folder of our computer on Beth's hard drive and the "My Documents" directory of Beth's computer on our hard drive. I am also looking at IBackup as a possible solution. There seems to be a mix of good and bad about it (plus it costs $10 per month). Of course it does give you access to your files from anywhere on the internet which may be a good or bad thing depending on how secure the data is being held.

Without bad luck we ....

2005-12-28T16:16:00.000-05:00

would have no luck at all. The hard drive on our PC decided to have a mechanical failure. This isn't one of those easy to recover from failures but a hardware crash that means the data is lost. What data? Everything. Yes, I know I'm a programmer and should know better than not backing up my data but I didn't so stop nagging. I even had two hard drives in that PC and the one that failed is the one with the irreplaceable data. Michel lost all of her graduate work. We lost all of our emails. This means that if your email address was on our optonline account, we don't know what it is anymore. So tonight I'm going to buy a new hard drive and start the laborious task of reloading all our software onto our PC. And this time I'm going to buy a couple of USB Flash Drives so that we can keep backups of everything we do. Just shoot me.

Michel!

2005-12-24T14:14:00.000-05:00

Michel goes Xmas shopping.

Michel had an incident last week. We had to have an ambulance come to the house and take her to the hospital. She was feeling very dizzy... so dizzy that she couldn't even walk. We were afraid it was something related to her brain. The doctors did a few tests and decided that it was an inner ear viral infection. The prognosis? She'll be better in a week or three months or anywhere in between. Meanwhile she is walking around trying to keep from toppling over. Her doctor put her out of work for a couple of weeks and I think that upset Michel more than anything else.

The shots to reduce the pain have worked well but now the other side is bothering her more. She starts those shots in a couple of weeks. In the picture you can see she is wearing her neck brace (sorry for the quality... it was my camera phone). The neck brace helps reduce the pain. Everytime we go driving anywhere Michel complains about the pain if the car jerks and she has been throwing up because of the vertigo. I just want her to be better. But this isn't getting better and it may never get better.

The Baltimore Excursion

2005-12-21T15:57:00.000-05:00

I have been very bad about posting to my blog and I have so much backlog. So let me catch up a little. Back on December 7th we had an appointment to see George Capone, M.D., at Johns Hopkins. He is the Director of the Down Syndrome Clinic and he has been following Mikey since he was a baby. He is also one of the leading experts (if not THE expert) on the dual diagnosis of Down syndrome and Autism. We broke the drive down into two days by staying at Michel's sister's house Tuesday night. She lives right by Trenton so it leaves a drive of about 2-2.5 hours. We got to the clinic early even after taking two rest stops during the drive down. Dr. Capone was thrilled with the way Mikey has improved since our last visit. Mikey was great. He sat on the floor, played games, watched his DVD, signed his needs... it was great especially compared to last time we were down to see Dr. Capone. The medications combined with the ABA have definitely been working. Dr. Capone dcecided that since we have psychiatrist that Mikey is seeing on a regular basis now, that he doesn't have to see us for a year! If we need his advice we can exchange emails with him. meanwhile he gave us some suggestions for further medication changes that should help Mikey even more.

We really are seeing a huge difference with Mikey. He is much more attentive in school. He is actually learning school material and not just "life skills". His new school, AHRC has been great. I dropped him off last week and everyone knew him when he came in. One of his therapists told me that Mikey is her favorite student. He's like the little mayor of AHRC. This is a HUGE improvement over the Rosemary Kennedy School where he was originally going to go. There was an article in the paper about the school's use of "detention rooms" which are little more than dark, padded closets:

BOCES center's discipline comes under fire

Based on Mikey's behavioral issues, there is no doubt that they would have locked him up in there. At AHRC it has been nothing but wonderful.

Killing babies

2005-11-21T10:39:00.000-05:00

We used to institutionalize babies with Down syndrome. Now we kill them.

An extra chromosome isn't awful by Beverly Beckham. Read it and cry.

Mikey sees the dentist

2005-11-16T16:27:00.000-05:00

Saturday we went to the dentist to have four of Mikey's baby teeth pulled. Mikey has the same problem that Beth had when she was little... her aadult teeth came in behind her baby teeth and didn't push the baby teeth out. So Michel had gone to the Pediatrician and got a little valium to slow Mikey down before the big day. We gave the valium to Mikey about 30 minutes before the procedure. The valium had exactly zero effect! Mikey was bouncing around in the waiting room like a mad man, laughing and entertaining the staff. We got him into the room and I climbed into the chair first and then I wrapped up Mikey with my arms and legs. He squirmed a bit but I held him. The dentist shot him with some Novacaine and Mikey got loose and bumped the needle. My fault! This time I held him by the elbows instead of the wrists and really got him good. The four teeth were gone even before we knew it. Mikey no longer looks like a shark with multiple rows of teeth. We have two more teeth to remove and then we are all done.

Our pediatric dentist is absolutely wonderful. He came in on his day off to take care of Mikey so that Mikey wouldn't miss any school. We met him when Beth was little. We had taken her to a couple of dentists and she was terrified of them. One dentist told us, "I can't work with your child." We took Beth to see Dr. Charlie and she was crying like crazy when she went in. By the time she was done, he had her laughing and hugging him. He has an incredible way with kids that melts away all their fears and anxieties.

On the NJ Turnpike

2005-11-12T14:04:00.000-05:00

This defines our luck.

Michel has a procedure

2005-11-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

Michel had another medical procedure (the specifics of which will not be mentioned) and everything went great. As usual, as you can see from the picture, Michel was a trooper and went in to face the worst medical science could throw at her with a smile on her face!

Perfect Weather

2005-11-07T11:47:00.000-05:00

November has been the perfect month so far. You will recall how miserable October was, but November has been great. The leaves have been turning but they are still mostly in the trees. This is a view from the front of my house looking west down my street.

It's lucky that the weather was so nice this past weekend because the new neighbors moved in. The house across the street has been vacant since January so we have been looking forward to having someone finally live there. They are a young couple, Melanie and Josh, with no children yet. Beth was hoping for a girl in the 8th grade but these things don't always work out. Of course, with any luck this does mean that Beth might find some baby sitting jobs in her future!

With such perfect weather, Mikey wanted to go for a drive so we hopped on the Parkway and drove down to Jones Beach. The nice thing about the Parkways on Long island is that they have a lot of trees planted along them. This time of the year it is especially pretty as the trees are changing color.

We drove along Ocean Parkway down by the beach. Amazingly, they are still charging to park your car so we didn't stop which was fine by Mikey. He just likes the drive and to listen to music. I took this picture of the world famous Jones Beach water tower, designed by Robert Moses and built in 1930. Here is a satellite image of the tower. The tower is where the roads intersect. The Jones Beach theater is just to the upper right in the satellite image.

Beth's Birthday

2005-11-07T11:39:00.000-05:00

Thursday was Beth's 13th birthday. We now have a teenager around the house. Of course, Beth has been acting like a teenager for about 10 years but that is another story. Our friends over at downsyn.com were nice enough to wish Beth a happy birthday Beth got some DVDs (Degrassi Junior High and the third season of Monk) and a docking station/boom box combo for her iPod.

So now that I have a teenage daughter, the question I have for all those dads out there is how did you survive your daughter's teenage years. The thing is, that coming up rapidly will be a new interest for Beth, B-O-Y-S. And I know about teenage boys. I was one once and the only thing that teenage boys are interested in is teenage girls. So what advice do you have for me? How can I get through the next few years without killing anyone? Or having a stroke? All advice gladly accepted.

But technology is so confusing!

2005-10-24T12:22:00.000-04:00

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Quick refresher: You may recall that Rafik Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon was murdered earlier this year and that there were accusations that Syrian officials were involved in the murder.

The UN produced a report on the murder and the report quoted a witness as saying, "the plot to kill Mr Hariri was hatched by unnamed senior Lebanese and Syrian officials." The report, however, was a Microsft Word document and the track changes feature had been left on. The document was distributed Thursday night and it was soon after that the computer gaffe was noticed. The original sentence revealed with the track changes feature named Syrian President al-Assad’s brother, Maher, his brother-in-law, Assef al-Shawkat, and other high-ranking Syrian officials and not "unnamed senior Lebanese and Syrian officials". Oops! I knew that all those menu options were too confusing for the typcial MS Word user.

Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs

Free Piglet!

2005-10-23T00:39:00.000-04:00

The world has gone insane. Piglet has been banned from some council offices in England because he offends Muslims. They don't like pigs.

Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: "It’s a tolerance of people’s beliefs."

So what the councillor is saying is that he wants everyone to be tolerant of his beliefs but he has no intention of being tolerant of anyone else's beliefs. In similar news and a further example of Islamic tolerance, eleven Muslim ambassadors have complained and Al Queda has threatened terrorist action because a newspaper in Denmark published a cartoon of Muhammad. Does anyone still doubt that we are at war with islam?

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

Update: Another example of tolerance: Three dead as Muslims attack Christian Church. Hundreds of muslims in Egypt attack a Christian Church because of DVD that they heard was anti-Islam, although none of them actually saw it.

Further Update: Turns out the DVD is about the mistreatment of Coptic Christians by Muslims in Egypt. The Muslim response? To mistreat Coptic Christians. And so it goes.

Mikey visits the ER

2005-10-21T15:51:00.000-04:00

Mikey was mad about something and banged his head the other night opening up a cut in his forehead. There was blood everywhere. The cut was pretty deep and it wouldn't stop bleeding completely so we brought him to the ER to see if he needed stitches. We brought the portable DVD player so Mikey watched the Sponge Bob Movie without any complaints. As it turned out we got quite a crowd of little kids hanging out with us watching the movie. We didn't have to wait too long as the hospital fast-tracked us and we got to see a doctor fairly quickly. The doctor decided to seal it up with glue and steri-strips (Beth didn't believe me that they used a glue stick - "They only do that on Sponge Bob!") which meant that we were out of there by 10 PM. If Mikey had needed stitches he would have had to be knocked out and we would have been there into the middle of the night.

Isn't it ironic?

2005-10-19T16:51:00.000-04:00

Well, Alanis Morissette might think it is even if it isn't, but it is an amusing coincidence.

Dog Attacks Anti-Dangerous Dog Bill Author

A New Mexico legislator gets a bill passsed that makes dog owners responsible if their dog attacks someone. In fact, the dog owner can be arrested for a felony. So guess what happens... the legislator gets bitten by a dog... his own dog... and ends up in the hospital. No word on how seriously he was injured.

When is a choice not a choice?

2005-10-19T15:24:00.000-04:00

The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?

Rest of article...

The author of this article is the mother of a child with Down syndrome. The article discusses an important issue that no one wants to talk about, "At a dinner party not long ago, I was seated next to the director of an Ivy League ethics program. In answer to another guest's question, he said he believes that prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability..."

If pre-natal testing can reveal disabilities, does a parent have the responsibility to get tested and dispose of disabled children? So much for choice. In this view, disabled children are nothing more than a drain on society. The article has some good points but one thing she gets wrong is the idea that she tries to justify not having an abortion by saying that her daughter is smart and is just like other kids. But that is irrelevant. What makes her duaghter's life worth while isn't that she isn't that bad, but rather that she is a human being. All human life is worth preserving and if we get into a discussion of which lives are worth while and which lives should be aborted then we are on the eugenics highway. Next, do we start discussing the IQ cutoff for allowing children to be born? "Sorry, but genetic testing revealed your child's IQ will only be 110 and we need physicists this week."

My son is a wonderful little boy and I love him to pieces even if he drives me crazy sometimes. His life is worth living simply because he is a human being. Yes, he is costing society a lot of money to raise and care for (more money than he will ever return to society) but is that how we measure someone's worth? Is it all about the money? Do we need to dispose of anyone who might be a drain on society? If so, do we stop at the unborn? There are plenty of people in prison who will never pay back to society what they are costing to keep incarcerated. Why do they get to live but an unborn child who never harmed anyone and whose only mistake was being less than perfect must be killed?

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

2005-10-19T13:54:00.000-04:00

Over the years, the laws about smoking at the office have drastically changed. When I started my career you could smoke anywhere in the office. Slowly the rules changed so that at first, you could only smoke at your desk if everyone around said it was OK, then it was changed to you could only smoke if you had a private office. This wasn't too bad if your boss was a smoker. Then the rule became that you could only smoke in the special smoking room. Finally, there was no smoking permitted at all. So the smokers would all head outside and stand around the doors to the building. The entries became a wall of smoke and old cigarette butts.

When I started at Symbol, that was basically how things were. But Symbol has a day care center with an outside area so they changed the rule so that you could only smoke outside in the specially built gazebo (picture). This should have been an improvement for the smokers because the gazebo is enclosed so that the smokers don't get rained on. But the smokers were still smoking in other areas. So Symbol put up signs all over the place saying that "Smoking is only permitted in gazebo" but smokers are still smoking in other areas. I am willing to bet that it won't be too long before Symbol does what Computer Associates did and forbid all smoking on Symbol property.

Sometimes it's better to be at the bottom

2005-10-19T13:53:00.000-04:00

We got a surprise last week at Symbol. Without any warning, our CIO and one of the VP's reporting to him were let go. As our CEO told us the next day, this was purely a performance issue. It had to do with SOX compliance issues. Apparently one-third of our SOX check points were inadequate (compared to about 3% last year). This is going to cost the company a couple of million to cover. Fortunately, our CEO had been smart enough to put some money on the side "just in case" but he would have preferred to use that money for developing new systems. The end result is that the top guys were told that their services were no longer needed, unlike so many other companies where the "little guy" is blamed for all the failures.

Mikey in the car

2005-10-19T10:33:00.000-04:00

I took this picture with my cell phone camera. I wasn't sure how it would come out. It certainly is tiny! Anyway, this is Mikey sitting in the car waiting to go to McDonald's. Mikey loves to go for a ride in the car. I just wish gas wasn't so expensive!

Blogger has a cool feature that allows you to email a picture to your blog and it is automatically posted along with any text you send along. I wanted to test it out to see how it works and it works great. The only problem is that it is hard to type text into a cell phone message. So I cheated and sent the picture and then edited the text from the PC. Much easier!

Rain rain go away

2005-10-14T10:59:00.000-04:00

It has been raining for 10 days. It figures that this would happen after I say how much I like October. This has been the rainiest October on record. It was so bad that the roof at work started to leak. Fortunately, the leak was in the men's room so it didn't damage anything. Personally, I have had enough rain for awhile so if the rest of the month is sunny that would be fine.

Death to Smurfs

2005-10-10T14:50:00.000-04:00

The United Nations has done what many of us have always wanted to do... blow up a village of Smurfs! UNICEF apparently decided that blowing up Smurfs would be a good anit-war message so they asked the family of their creator for permission to blow up a village of the little blue creatures. The result is a 25-second anti-war commercial that shows a village of happy Smurfs being blown up.

Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions.

So the question is, can we convince the UN to blow up the Teletubbies next?

What does Tom need?

2005-10-09T22:35:00.000-04:00

I found a new "fun with Google" game... Type in to Google, "[your name] needs" and find out what it is that you need. Here are some of my favorites:

Tom needs...

a hat (well, I'm not bald yet)
a dog (I have one and one is enough, thank you)
many lines (no, that would be Kate Moss)
to be back in a school setting - amongst his peers (from an autism web site... that is a quite a coincidence)
to get Roger to do most of the talking (Roger who?)
some concealer (And what exactly am I concealing?!)
to find Jesus (but where to look!?)
a swift kick in the face (That's not very nice!)
to be punched and kicked repeatedly (OK, now you are getting carried away!)
to do some CREST commercials and show off his Big Pants (OK, I get the Crest commercial but "Big Pants"?)
people in his life who will tell him that being gay is okay (I'm not gay.... not that there's anything wrong with that!)
a competent wife so badly (Yeah, I'm fed up with this incompetent one)
to start carrying a gun (With all these people wanting to punch and kick me, maybe I'd better!)
to realize he's not a doctor and knows nothing about having a baby (What? I'm not a doctor?)
TO GET HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS BUTT (Now that is true!)

Wake me up when September ends

2005-10-06T10:23:00.000-04:00

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends

I love October. October is by far my favorite month. October is the transition from the heat and humidity of summer to the cool weather of autumn. October brings apples that you can pick frsh off the tree. Before things got too crazy around our house we used to drive out to the North Fork and pick apples and stop in at a winery or two. Walking around an orchard and eating apples fresh off the tree is a perfect way to spend a day. (Just watch out for the poison ivy growing around the apple trees.) The so-called Red Delicious from Washington state can't hold a candle to a fresh NY apple.

The last few days have been cool in the morning and in October that often means early morning fog. Three mornings in a row there was fog as I as driving to work. Long Island is a big place, so big that you sometimes forget you are on an island, but you are still never more than 12 miles from the ocean.

Could you give me a lift?

2005-10-06T10:20:00.000-04:00

In my last entry, I should have added that I was posting to my blog while I was sitting in the waiting room. How did I get internet access? I searched for an open wireless network and found one that was unencrypted and had internet access. So I piggy-backed on to that network. So the question is, is there anything wrong with doing that? Is it immoral to get into someone's network and use their bandwidth to access the internet? What do you think?

Waiting...

2005-10-03T15:17:00.000-04:00

I am sitting in the waiting room of the gastroenterologist listening to Green Day and waiting to go in to see Michel. She had an endoscopy to see if anything was going on in her stomach. She did have a bit of an ulcer but nothing that should have been causing the pain she has been having so we still don't have a diagnosis. Next, the oncologist. Ugh.

And the children shall lead them

2005-09-29T14:29:00.000-04:00

Even if you aren't a football fan, this is a great story.

Weis uses play called by 10-year-old boy dying of cancer

***

HatTip to Long or Short?

I score a book

2005-09-29T12:02:00.000-04:00

Apparently Map was so impressed by my getting her a book that she sent me a book in return! The book she sent is the new book by Umberto Eco. Regular readers of my blog will recall that I enjoy reading his books. The new book is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and it looks outstanding. I can hardly wait to start it.

So as you can see the good karma of BAFAB week works! So run out and buy a friend a book just because.

Spam Comments

2005-09-29T11:56:00.000-04:00

I got my first spam comment. I deleted it within a minute of its being posted because I get an email to let me know that a comment has been posted. If this continues I will have to turn word verification on.

Update: Got a second one (3:20 PM). I think I must have been noticed.

Update II: Got a bunch more so I turned on word verification. The worst part was that the spamming comments were on my salute to the World Trade Center. Some people just suck.

Back to school night

2005-09-29T11:43:00.000-04:00

Last night was the first parent/teacher meetings at Beth's school. It was an opportunity to meet Beth's 8th grade teachers and get an idea of the kind of work that would expected of her for the year. Michel couldn't go because she wasn't feeling well (more on this later) so I went alone. Beth's teachers are all very nice. I think her French teacher wants to adopt her. ;-) The French class is going on a trip to Quebec at the end of the year so she told us a little about that as well. All her classes seemed like a reasonable amount of work. Her english class involves a lot of reading. Beth is expected to read at least 1,000 pages each quarter and write about what she has read. Her science teacher was especially mice. Beth is taking 9th grade science so she has to take the Regents at the end of the year. Her teacher kept telling us not to worry that all his students do very well and he could tell that this class was going to work very hard because he saw a lot of dedication. The science teacher, by the way, looks exactly what a science teacher should look like. He reminds me of those pictures from the Apollo missions showing the scientists at the Houston Space Center huddled around a monitor.

When I got home, Michel told me that she was feeling very ill and wanted to go over to the ER. So we grabbed the kids and drove over. Once Michel was checked in we gave her some money and our new portable DVD player along with some I Love Lucy DVDs and I took the kids home. Michel was released in the middle of the night and she decided to walk home! It's only a 15 minute walk but still... Anyway, her neurosurgeon's office called and he doesn't think it is related to the shunt so the search for the source of the pain continues.

A blog of a different color

2005-09-28T13:53:00.000-04:00

Yes, you are at the right place. I got tired of the lighthouse/nautical theme and went with something more basic. I'm not sure if I like the color so that may change again but I will leave it this way for now to see if it grows on me.

Beth and her music

2005-09-28T10:46:00.000-04:00

Linkin Park makes me feel old. My daughter likes them (they are perhaps her favorite group right now) but they sound like nothing more than noise to me. I feel like my father is taking over my mind as I am tempted to tell her to turn off that "crap". In fact, I actually went in her room and turned her music down! (Not that it was particularly loud but I could hear it.) I think Beth actually likes that I don't like her music. She's just a few weeks away from being a teenager and she needs some independence... something that is hers and not her parents.

In general, Beth has wonderful taste in music. Her favorite groups are The Ramones and The Clash, two groups that Michel and I both love. We watched a TV program on the old punk rock scene and Beth was fascinated by the punk groups like The Dead Kennedys and Black Flag. So even though Beth is OK with liking the music we like, she doesn't want us to like the music she likes... if that makes any sense.

The group Evanescence is a group that Beth and I both enjoy although she doesn't mind that I like them. The lead singer, Amy Lee, has a very nice voice and the music is well done. The group learned the lesson of Nirvana and goes for the slow start, fast and loud finish.

Green Day, though, is a group that I really like but that Beth doesn't want me to like. What I like about them is that they are more like the old punk groups only with more musical talent. ;-) Their songs are political, reminding me of songs like "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" by The Ramones or "Holiday in Cambodia" by The Dead Kennedys. "Holiday" is a solid punk rock song about the evils of the Bush administration. Even if you are a GWB fan, punk is supposed to be anti-government so that is irrelevant.

The best part of this is that Beth is truly developing her own style. Her musical taste is her own and is not simply a rehash of whatever her friends like. Beth is definitely her own unique individual with her own likes and dislikes and is not just a member of the crowd. She makes me proud.

Update I: Beth read this and agreed with the statement, "I think Beth actually likes that I don't like her music. She's just a few weeks away from being a teenager and she needs some independence... something that is hers and not her parents."

Update II: Beth reminded me that "Know Your Rights" by The Clash is another good example of a political song.

Buy a friend a book

2005-09-28T10:27:00.000-04:00

The lovely and talented Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira, has been promoting BAFAB, Buy A Friend A Book Week. Next week is the second BAFAB week so you still have time to participate. BAFAB is simple... buy a friend a book for no good reason other than that they are your friend. You can read more about it on Debra's BAFAB web site. I bought a copy of Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell for a friend in San Francisco. I hope Map enjoys the book!

Update: if you blog about BAFAB week, you could win 4 books!

Avast, me hearties!

2005-09-19T09:28:00.000-04:00

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day today so get out there and talk like a pirate. So, all ye land lubbers, hop smartly and start talking like a pirate unless you're a no good bilge rat. Arghhhh.

Music Therapy

2005-09-15T15:50:00.000-04:00

If you recall, Mikey was in Newsday back in May because of his involvement with music therapy. The music therapist who works with Mikey is John Carpente who started The Rebecca Center for Music Therapy at Molloy College. John is currently attending Temple University for his PhD. John's thesis is about Mikey and he has posted it on the web. I thought you may be interested in reading about Mikey and about the many benefits that music therapy has provided to Mikey. Creative Music Therapy with a Boy with Multiple Impairments: Stepping out of isolation into new experiences.

Back to school

2005-09-08T09:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the first day of school for Beth and Mikey. Beth only had a half day. Today is her first full day of school. Apparently her first day was a great day. Turns out that her friend is riding on the bus with her. Last year the friend's mom drove her to school every day but this year the friend is on the bus. The school did make a mistake in her schedule. Beth was supposed to be in 9th grade science (Earth Science) but they had her in 8th grade science. We spoke to the guidance counselor and everything should be OK now.

Mikey's first day was a full day. Because we changed his school so late, the bus wasn't settled so Michel had to drive Mikey to school. She said that Mikey went right off to his class without any complaint. He had a great day in school and his teacher said that he was right on target. He sat and observed everyone and didn't have any issues or problems during the day. I think that this school is the absolutely right choice for Mikey.

The prince returns

2005-09-02T12:19:00.000-04:00

Mikey came home on the bus Sunday without any problems. He had attached himself to his counselor and stuck with him like glue. We had a copy of the schedule and it looked like fun. A lot of running around, playing in the pool, and other phsyical activites. Mikey loves running around and playing so this was perfect for him. Plus after 12 hours of running around, he was ready to sleep at night. Michel only called the camp three times to check on him. I spoke to the man who runs the program and he told me that Mikey did great and next year they look forward to having him for two weeks!

Mikey came home to his new big boy bed and his first night home he jumped in and went to sleep without any trouble at all. We did put a gate at his door because we are afraid he might wander off if he woke up in the middle of the night.

So everyone survived camp week and we are getting ready for school. Michel went to the CSE meeting the other day and everyone agreed that Mikey should go to AHRC. Now we are all set for a great year.

New Orleans

2005-09-01T15:36:00.000-04:00

Support the Red Cross in their efforts to support the victims.

Time to eat

2005-09-01T12:40:00.000-04:00

We got a call the day after we dropped Mikey off at camp. He wouldn't sit at the table in the cafeteria to eat. He ran off to the corner and sat there away from everyone else. They wanted to know if it was OK to let him sit in the corner by himself. We thought this might happen because Mikey gets nervous around crowds so we told them it was not a problem. In an earlier post I mentioned Mikey's anxiety issues and crowds are an issue with Mikey. Of course, it is possible that Mikey was aware of what happened to Wild Bill Hickok when he didn't sit with his back to the corner.

They told us that Mikey was adjusting very well otherwise. He slept in a regular bed although the counselor did push his bed up against Mikey's bed because Mikey wouldn't stay put and it did take Mikey awhile to fall asleep. Mikey has been sleeping in a crib at home because we were worried about him not staying in bed and wandering off. With the adjustment to a bed at camp, we thought this would be a good opportunity to get Mikey a bed. So Mikey will have a surprise when he gets home.

Work notes

2005-08-31T12:14:00.000-04:00

In case you were following along with my posts about using SAP Portal you will be sad to hear that there won't be any more updates. Because of the cost of development, the project has been cancelled (at least for now) and we are going to continue to support the existing system (standard servlet/JSP application). I can't say this is a bad thing because I wasn't convinced that the SAP Portal solution was a good direction in the long run. There had been a lot of thought about using it for internal applications in the intranet but there never seemed to be a good analysis to determine if this was a good direction for our external web site. It was more like, "We are going SAP for our applications so we are using SAP Portals no matter what." Anyway, with the cancellation the floodgates have opened with all the projects that were put on hold because "that would be added to the SAP Portal version." So we have lots of work to do and some of it looks like fun development.

Mikey goes to camp

2005-08-31T11:54:00.000-04:00

It has been too long since I updated! Bad Tom!

OK, rather than discuss everything in one blog entry I will break things up. Last Tuesday (August 23rd) we brought Mikey to AHRC in Old Brookville to take the bus to Camp Loyaltown in Hunter, NY. This is about a three hour ride. Although Michel had doubts that we would get Mikey on the bus, I was optimistic. When we got to AHRC, there were just too many people around and Mikey was just too frightened to get on the bus. I tried to carry him on but he was struggling and crying. So Michel turned out to be right and we had to drive him up to camp. We did get to meet Mikey's counselor (each camper has their own counselor) so that was nice. He is from Ireland and travels around the world doing things like being a camp counselor for disabled children.

We dropped Beth off at the grandparents' in Brooklyn and drove up to Hunter. Mikey loves the car so he just sat back and enjoyed the ride. I was worried that we wouldn't be able to get away once we got up there, but everything turned out fine. Mikey saw the pool and that was it. We handed Mikey to the counselor, dropped his bags off, and said goodbye. No tears from Mikey at all.

The one good thing about driving Mikey up was that we got a chance to see the camp. It is very nice. They have a big pool and a playground right by Mikey's cabin. The counselors sleep in the cabin with the kids and the doors are alarmed so that if someone tries to walk out, everyone is alerted. There is a counselor awake during the night to keep an eye on things. As one of the administrators of the camp told us, "Camp Lose-A-Kid" probably wouldn't be very popular so they make sure that all the campers are safe at all times. Mikey's trip lasts from Tuesday thru Sunday so this gives us all a little break.

A Quote

2005-08-13T09:16:00.000-04:00

"The human heart was not meant to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that--a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest."

-Debra Ginsberg, Raising Blaze...Bringing Up an Extraordinary Son in and Ordinary World

Mikey Update

2005-08-11T11:58:00.000-04:00

Mikey has been attending the Rosemary Kennedy School for the summer. We had hoped he would be able to stay in Plainview for the summer but that didn't happen. As it turned out, it was a good thing that he went to RKS because we found out how much we hate it. A couple of weeks into the program, Michel discovered that Mikey was not getting the number of speech, physical, and occupational therapy sessions that are in his IEP. When she spoke to the principal, the response was that they can't be expected to provide the full compliment of services in the summer because of staffing problems and that this problem has been going on for 28 years. Of course, no mention was ever made of this to us when we were looking for a school. Most importantly, providing the services in the IEP is not optional. RKS must provide the services as defined in Mikey's IEP. We also found out that the computer in Mikey's classroom was broken and that the teacher who fixes them is out for the summer. Working on the computer is something Mikey really enjoys and it is a great learning tool for him. When Michel called the principal about the computer she was told there was nothing that could be done. Michel called the office of our state senator Carl Marcellino and amazingly there was a brand new computer in Mikey's classroom the next day.

All of this convinced us that RKS was not the place for Mikey and Michel started looking for another school. First, we went to look at The Center for Developmental Disabilities in Woodbury. It was a very nice school... very quiet and not far from home. The kids seemed very well behaved and on target. After seeing Mikey they told us that he wasn't right for their school. This made me wonder because it seemed that since Mikey could be mainstreamed if his behavior was better, why does this school even exist? It seems to me that most of the kids at The Center could be integrated in regular classrooms if they can sit and attend and follow directions.

With The Center out of the running, Michel went to look at AHRC's school and she liked it. The school isn't straight ABA but Michel thought it would be a good fit and the teachers at AHRC thought Mikey would do very well there. They are more academic oriented than RKS so we look forward to Mikey learning to read. Now it is just a matter of talking to our school district and getting Mikey's IEP updated which should not be a problem. Michel and I are both very happy that Mikey will not be at RKS much longer.

AHRC runs a summer camp called Camp Loyaltown in Hunter, NY and Mikey will be going there in two weeks. This is a sleep away camp and Mikey will be gone for 5 days. Since we have the medicaid waver this is being paid for by the state. It is going to be very strange not having Mikey around. We still don't know what we are going to do with ourselves.

I should add that Mikey fell at RKS and got three stiches in his chin. His teacher tried to grab him but he wriggled out of her grasp and banged his chin into a bookshelf. They had to sedate him in the ER to get the stiches in and we were able to remove them at home while Mikey was asleep. It is healing very nicely.

References: Rosemary Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy (the sister of Ted Kennedy) was lobotomized by her parents because of behavior issues.

James Doohan Dies

2005-07-21T11:40:00.000-04:00

I am sure every geek in America knows that James Doohan, Scotty from Star Trek died. What I didn't know was that he was a war hero. Doohan, who was in the Canadian army, came ashore on Juno Beach on D-Day and was severley wounded. He was shot multiple times in the arm and leg (and lost a finger) and was only saved because the bullet that would have hit him in the chest hit his silver cigarette holder. This is one of the few reported times that cigarette smoking actually saved someone's life. Doohan had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Having watched my father deteriorate from the disease, Doohan's passing so quickly after being diagnosed was probably a mercy.

The religion of peace

2005-07-21T11:18:00.000-04:00

It looks like terrorists have attacked the London underground again. Is it really that these are simply Muslims who don't understand their religion? The NY Daily News reported that a recent study showed that 68% of Palestinians with some college education think that suicide bombers blowing up women and children is a good thing. Interestingly, the poorer and less educated of Palestinians are less likely to support terrorism (although the numbers are still high - 46%). And these numbers are similar to other islamic countries. In Lebanon, for example, the number is 40% of the population supports terrorism and suicide bombers. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said today, "Terrorism is the enemy of all free people." What does that tell us about these Islamic nations? Will Congress ever wake up to what is going on in the world?

7/7

2005-07-08T10:52:00.000-04:00

Google Sightseeing

2005-06-28T12:05:00.000-04:00

Google now provides satellite images for most of the world. Sites like Google Sightseeing have popped up to display some of these images. Take a look at the few I found and if you find any other intertesting sites, post them in the comments.

Mt. Kilimanjaro - the tallest mountain in Africa. As the mountain rises out out of a savannah, the cooler temperatures create a forested landscape. The top of the mountain is covered with snow.
Alcatraz - The former prison located in San Francisco Bay was the home of many notorious criminals including Al Capone.
The Washington Monument, Washington D.C. - Scroll around and you can see the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials as well as the Smithsonian.
Empire State Building, NY - Towering over the center of Manhattan... look closely and maybe you can see King Kong.

Road trip

2005-06-15T12:39:00.000-04:00

We went to Baltimore yesterday to see Dr. George T. Capone at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. We have been seeing Dr. Capone for several years but it had been awhile since the last trip down because of Michel's illness. The trip should be between four and five hours but we got caught in traffic on the way down. Every cop in Queens was racing to investigate the shooting of a cop right off the Belt Parkway and they had a couple of lanes blocked off right in the middle of rush hour. We thought we had left with plenty of time to spare but we ended up getting there 15 minutes before the appointment. That is cutting it close!

Dr. Capone thought that Mikey may be experiencing anxiety. This could explain his hostility to environmental changes and his desire to do things like shake a sock for long periods of time. His obsessive behaviors may have a calming influence on his anxiety. Dr. Capone suggested some alternate medications to try and he also wants the school district to bring ABA into the house. Friday, Michael will get some blood tests and then we can start the new medication. Should be an interesting weekend.

Party like crazy!

2005-06-13T21:38:00.000-04:00

It was a party weekend for Beth. Two of her friends had Bat Mizvah's this weekend. Her and her friends danced all day Saturday and Sunday. Beth complained that the boy's were all boring because none of them would dance. The musical high point was Saturday when the DJ played the Ramones, "I want to be Sedated". All in all, Beth has a much more active social life than her dull parents.

Compare this picture to the picture taken two weeks ago during the school trip. We have gone from a freezing spring to a broiling spring. Today was in the 90's and it is expected to stay that way at least until Friday. Summer is still eight days away.

Mikey Graduates!

2005-06-13T21:33:00.000-04:00

Mikey's graduation was Thursday. Here he is at the graduation party with his teachers. Two graduation ceremony funny moments... The kids put on a little musical number. Mikey was the only one who was really into it. He was dancing like crazy and really shook it up on stage. When they called Mikey up for his diploma, he got a big ovation. I think Mikey is very well known at the school. Anyway, when the applause started up, Mikey gave a huge smile, turned and tossed his diploma into the crowd.

Mikey is still attending the school and will be attending through the summer. We are still trying to work out where he will be in the fall.

15 minutes and counting

2005-06-05T10:58:00.000-04:00

My blog got a mention in the NY Daily News today (page 36). Dawn Eden, who wites their "Blog On!" column in the Sunday paper and is a friend of cousin Kevin, had written me on Thursday with a few questions. She didn't use any of my answers but that is OK. Sometimes you just don't know where an article will go until you start writing it. Also, I don't think I gave her the pro-blogging kind of answers she was looking for. I told her that I have had more response from my website than I have ever had from my blog. The one thing that bugged me about the article was the expression, "Down syndrome kids." Arghhhh, I hate that! It's "kids with Down syndrome,"... people first! Oh well, we can't expect everyone to get it right.