Backup Software

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 ....

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!

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

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

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

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

This defines our luck.

Michel has a procedure

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

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

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!

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!

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.