August 2003 Archives

If there is one thing I've given a lot of thought to lately it is “stagnation.”

While Iodynamics seems to gradually forge forward and grow — albeit not as fast as anyone would like it to — Christine and I frequently finding ourselves discussing, debating, arguing, even fighting, over our current situation with regard to housing, employment, and income.

Do not fear. We still maintain a very loving relationship, but there is this new stress we're dealing with which is substantially more significant than the stress of us spending our weekdays apart when I worked in Orem and was home only on the weekends.

Understandably, Christine wants stability and security. Iodynamics is almost to the point of providing that, but not yet. And there's still a lot of uncertainty with Iodynamics. If there's anything I've discovered while operating a business, it's that there is always uncertainty. Most people don't realize it, however, because they're usually in an abstracted position.

For example, I'm sure the employees of Enron Corporation felt they had great jobs with a stable, secure company. Then, the world came crashing in.

That's probably not a good comparison since it seems Enron was plagued with all sorts of scandal and deception, but it just goes to show there's a lot the “employee” doesn't know about the state of affairs of the company they work for.

Anyway, back to the topic of stagnation.

I don't want my children to grow up and say, “Man, mom and dad sure squandered their life. ”

Christine and I have been living in the basement of her brother's house since May. When we moved in, we thought our inhabitance would last no longer than the summer. As the summer wore on, we started thinking the end of the year. Now, we're not really sure what's going to happen.

I want to build a home somewhere — probably in Weber or Box Elder County. Maybe even Cache County again. Who knows? The reason I want to build is because I've heard I can save a bundle of money building my own home vs. buying a new or newer home built by a homebuilder and sold by a real estate agent.

In fact, one associate of mine told me he built his house for less than $130,000 and a major homebuilding company built a house across the street from him with almost the same floor plan and it sold for $185,000.

So... this week, I'm going to be talking to a civil engineer recommended to me that works with many of the communities in Weber and Box Elder Counties. I'm hoping he can give me some ideas of where I should look at building sites.

Maya turns the big zero-five

I can't believe I have a kid that's going to be in school. I suppose this is the first of many unbelievable milestones in a parent's life. Maya's fifth birthday is tomorrow (today actually) and she's going to be starting kindergarten on Wednesday.

We celebrated her birthday today by heading down to the local Chuck E. Cheese, where we did a half-birthday party for Lucy in June. Then, we went out to my mom and dad's and the girls made cupcakes with my mom. Then we lit some candles and sang “Happy Birthday” to Maya.

Maya got a Power-Puff Girls backpack full of stuff for her birthday from Christine and I. She got a Care Bear, an umbrella, and a little picnic table from my mom and dad.

I've been hearing a lot lately about how the third child is the hardest. It's definitely been the hardest for Christine. I can't really decide for me. My life is definitely more complicated since we brought this kid home.

Eli update

I'll try to do more updates in the future. :-)

In the meantime, here's a picture of the boy.

Eli on his side on Christine's lap

I learned a little trick with my Canon Powershot S10 digital camera. The camera does this double-flash thing that I've seen most digital and film cameras do. I think it's to meter the exposure with the flash. The problem, though, is that there's just enough time between the first and second flash for the subject to reflexively close their eyes.

My technique may not be an original technique, but it works. I turn the camera to the manual mode (the icon with the 'M' next to the camera icon). I pre-focus the subject by pressing the shutter button half way down. Then, I press the “Set” button on the back of the camera. This activates the first flash — the metering flash. Then I wait until my subject has recovered from the first flash and I push the shutter button and the second flash fires. The picture above was taken this way.

But anyway, back to Eli. This kid isn't sleeping through the night yet, of course. He doesn't sleep much at all at night, in fact. Looking at the time right now, it's 3:25 a.m. He got to sleep before 3 a.m. tonight, which is better than the just-before-4 night I had last night.

I've been doing night duty lately, which ruins my mornings, which ruins my productivity, which ruins my ability to produce gainful income. Arghs!

I'm not sure what we're going to do, but something's gotta give. That's one thing that's easier when you have just one kid - you can let your schedule revolve around his/her schedule. With two or more kids, suddenly, you're not allowed to have a schedule. You're there to serve them!

At his 2-week checkup (which we took him to when he was 12 days old), he was 1/2 ounce under his birth weight. This was a little alarming to me, until Christine explained to me that babies usually lose some weight after they're born. So, he was pretty close to being back up to his birth weight then.

Christine's been having trouble breastfeeding Eli because of a small pocket of fat that's obstructing the milk flow. She's talked to her doctor about it and she's decided she's going to have to stop breastfeeding. Otherwise, she runs the risk of continual infections while she breastfeeds. She was really upset about this because she feels breastfeeding is the best thing for Eli, but we'll deal with it.

He's sure been eating a lot. He eats pretty regularly every two hours- and he's been taking 2-3 ounces each time. As I look at him tonight, he's starting to look kind of chubby whereas up until now he's looked like a pretty trim baby.

Alright, that's enough for now. It's nearly 4 a.m. after all.

Oh. I should be in bed by now. I really should. I need to drive up to Logan tomorrow and I should leave by 9 or so. Eh... I guess that's not too bad. I'll be okay.

Son

I have thrown up an event page for Eli, so go check it out.

A little more background

On Friday night, I stayed up late working on various projects. It was about 3 a.m., and I was just about ready to turn my computer monitor off and head to bed, when Christine came into the office and said that she had just had a real painful contraction.

I asked her to tell me more and she told me it had been about 20 minutes since the painful contraction and she hadn't had any more since then. I suggested we both go back to bed and get some sleep.

I had a hard time getting to sleep. Probably drank too much Diet Coke while I was working. When Christine woke me up around 4 a.m., I probably had about 25 minutes of sleep. She told me she'd been having consistent contractions spaced six minutes apart since we went to bed at 3. She was ready to go to the hospital.

Jennie and Jay were in Park City with Jennie's family, so I called my mom to ask her if she could come over and stay with the kids. She said she would. I helped Christine gather a few things together while we waited for my mom to come over.

When my mom arrived, we headed up to Alta View Hospital.

They checked us in and got Christine in her gown and hooked her up to the monitors. She was 4 and a half centimeters dilated and about 85% effaced. She was doing pretty good with contractions about four to six minutes apart. Then, they started an saline IV drip. It all went south from there.

When Christine was pregnant with Maya, we were going to do the natural childbirth thing - no drugs, no epidural, etc. We had read in one of the books we had that the IV drip slowed labor down sometimes because it dilluted the concentration of natural labor-inducing hormones in the bloodstream.

That would perfectly explain what happened to Christine. She and I sat around for six to eight hours waiting for her labor to progress and it only digressed. I got a few winks of sleep while we waited, but not much good sleep.

Towards the end of that time, the anesthesiologist came in and gave Christine an epidural. A little while after that, a nurse came in and hung a second bag of fluids, but with pitocin added. It wasn't long after that before Christine's labor picked up well.

Somewhere in there, the main IV bag ran dry and the pitocin-laced fluid kept dripping slowly into the IV. I noticed it just before the nurse came in and replaced the main bag. About two minutes after she got the main bag hung and connected, Christine had a really powerful contraction that made the graph on the monitor screen jump way up high and stay high. The baby's heartbeat disappeared from the monitor and the nurse got visibly nervous and reapplied jelly to the electrode surface and moved it around on Christine's stomach in an attempt to relocate the baby's heartbeat.

After a few moments, the “megacontraction” subsided and the baby's heartbeat was back - strong as ever.

From then on, Christine's contractions were about three to four minutes apart. When the doctor came in, Christine only had to push during three contractions before Eli was born.

The Sons rock the Zephyr

So how do we get from this birth story to talking about a Pink Floyd tribute concert? Easy! After Eli was born, I went to work a Sons Of Nothing show.

I didn't leave Christine and the baby until I knew everything was okay. I made it to the Zephyr Club in Salt Lake City around 6:30 p.m. and got all my gear set up and tested.

A local Led Zepplin tribute band named No Quarter opened up the evening with a 45-60 minute show full of energy. A lot of people had settled into the club by the end of their set. I'd never seen that many people at a Sons Of Nothing show and was concerned they'd all come to see the opening band and would soon be leaving.

But, it was not to be the case. Most didn't leave and more trickled in. The place was nicely attended when our friends Sons Of Nothing hit the stage.

I had put together a decent cue sheet for myself to visually organize all the visual and sound effects cues for all the songs and it helped a lot. It was the closest I'd come to a flawless execution of my duties... and it rocked!

At one point early on in the Sons set, Thom took a moment between songs to ask the crowd if they liked the screen. They whooped, hollered, and applauded. He then proceeded to tell them a little about the guy running that portion of the show — me — and how I edited all this video for the Sons Of Nothing shows and that I was there on the day my wife had given birth to our third child.

More than a dozen people congratulated me after that, some more inebriated than others.

In the end, the show went spectacularly well. The band had a great time playing and I thoroughly enjoyed doing what I did. And, since I get paid a little for my work now, I was pleased when I found out the band was paid above and beyond their guarantee because of the nice attendance.

And, it looks like Sons Of Nothing will be returning to the Zephyr Club next month. Yay!

I stuck around after the show to help pack up and offered Thom a ride home. We ended up leaving the Zephyr somewhere around 3 a.m. We were both hungry, so we stopped at a Dennys and had some late-night food. Then I took Thom home and headed home myself. I fell into bed around 4:30 — 24 hours after taking Christine to the hospital.

ipac-ng

Tonight, I was researching some network accounting tools and came upon ipac-ng, which seems like it will fit my needs very well. This program establishes an arbitrary number of IPTABLE rules for tracking packet traffic through a Linux system. Then, it can do all kinds of fun stuff with that data. For example, it can draw charts - showing bandwidth utilization and other statistics.

I'm pretty happy with it so far. I tried rolling my own program to do the same thing a few months ago, but it didn't work quite right and I never got back to it. Maybe I won't have to now.

Here's some more information for the information-deprived Fozzolog reader.

Eli

The name Eli is a family name. Eli Barton was my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. He was born in 1760 in New Britian Township, Bucks County, PA. He served in the Revolutionary War when he was 16 years old. He married Mary Roberts around 1790. They had seven children, one of which was William Roberts Barton, from whom my family descended. Eli Barton died in November 1842 in Tuscarawa County, Ohio.

Here's a darling picture of older sister Maya holding her baby brother.

Maya holding Eli

Okay... I'm working on it. His name is Eli Doran Barton. Here are a couple of pictures.

A close up of Eli

Eli in a blue outfit for the ride home

Christine and I have successfully made ourselves a male offspring.

Our son has risen... er, come out

At about 2:30 p.m. today, our son was born at Alta View Hospital in Sandy. He weighed 7 pounds 6 ounces and measured 20 inches in length. He has a lot of dark hair on his head - enough it could probably be spiked. :-)

We don't have a name yet, but I have vowed to assign his official designation tomorrow.

Pictures to come within the next 12-24 hours.

Christine was due 27 August. We think she delivered early because... well, read on.

Lagooning it

On Thursday, my parents, my siblings, their kids, and our family went to Lagoon for the day. We didn't get there until three in the afternoon, so our time to do stuff was a bit limited, but we did as much as we could before 10 p.m.

Christine wasn't supposed to go with us to Lagoon. We didn't think an eight and a half month-pregnant woman would have much fun. But, when two of my sister's kids opted out of going to Lagoon in favor of going to the Cache County Fair with their friends (What the hell were they thinking?!), we had some extra tickets. So, Christine came. She figured all that walking could put her into labor.

*winks*

The kids had a blast and didn't want to leave. Honestly, I didn't want to leave either. I had a great time and I can't wait to go again — probably next year. We'll have to try to get there a lot earlier in the day, though, so we can do more stuff.

Here are some pictures from our Lagoon trip:

Lucy & Maya in a boat ride

Lucy and her Grammy on the merry go round

Tom, Lucy, Christine, and Maya on the train

Tom, Darvell, Allison, Karen (Mom), me, Maya, and Lucy on the Rattlesnake Rapids

Getting drenched.

Christine's gettin' big.

The baby is due August 27 — 22 days away — but Christine's starting to feel like she wants to have the baby now. I think most women feel that way toward the end of the pregnancy. Some women might feel that way the whole pregnancy.

A Wall of Sons

Last Friday was a Sons Of Nothing show at Club Suede in Park City. This show featured the first complete performance of The Wall.

The show was pretty good, considering what a tremendous feat we had to deal with. I had to come up with a lot of new video for the show, but most of it was stuff I lifted off the DVD of the movie.