Made it home today. Ray has a shiner in his left eye as a side effect of the surgery but otherwise is back to his usual wise-cracking self. Thanks everyone for your prayers and support!

I've been a real slacker about writing stuff in my journal. But I thought it appropriate that I write about the happenings in my life since they have been pretty monumental.

About 3 weeks ago Ray started complaining of a headache. Mom gave him some iduprofen and the headache went away just to return the next day a little stronger. This went on for a few days until the headaches got intense. At that time Mom tool Ray to the emergency room where they did a CAT scan of his head and determined that he had a sinus infection. Sent them home with a prescription for a general antibiotic.

Two days later, the headaches were still happening, but now Ray also had a 103 degree fever and was vomiting. Our family doctor admitted him to Centegra Medical Center in Woodstock.

On arrival there, the doctors did an MRI, another CAT scan and a Spinal Tap. They determined that he had a staph infection in his blood and put him on intravenous antibiotics. Within a two days he improved tremendously but the doctors still hadn't pinpointed the cause of the staph infection. Even though he had improved, he continued to have periods of fever and headaches. We also noticed that his left eyelid was droopy so another CAT can was done and the doctors discovered that he had a pocket of infection in his Spheriod Sinus and that through the blood another pocket of infection had developed on his brain adjacent to the sinus pocket.

The doctors in Woodstock decided that these pockets of infection were the cause of all the trouble but that they did have the staff or expertise to do the necessary surgery. So on his birthday, Ray was transported by ambulance to Children's Hospital in Milwaukee.

At the children's hospital, he went through more rounds of scans and had hordes of doctors looking at him. The day after he arrived they did surgery on his sinuses to drain the infection.
Things were almost immediately better but minor headaches and slight fevers persisted and CAT cans showed that the infection on his brain was not responding to antibiotics.

This morning, the pediatric neurosurgeon opened his skull to drain the last pocket of infection and the doctors are optimistic that they've finally cleared up the root causes of the problem.

With luck and God's grace we will be heading home Friday where Ray will have to go through 8 weeks of intravenous antibiotics treatments though a catheter they've placed in his left arm
(called a PICC line).

There may be hope in Wrigleyville after all. Lou Pinella actually made what appears to be a smart move by sending Rich Hill to AAA Iowa and putting Job Lieber in the rotation.

Hill has not been effective at all. Leiber has shown a lot of promise as a reliever. A move like this was unheard of in Dusty days, then the team would stick with a lousy pitcher through the all-star break in hopes that he would "snap out of it".

With 4 strong pitchers in the rotation there could be life after all. Now all Lou needs to do is find someone to take the last spot currently held (poorly) by Marquis.

How do you explain regression testing to a client?

When a customer asks for a change on a web site and that change initiates a chain of problems, it's hard to get the client to understand that if they don't want that to happen they have to be willing to include the cost of the regression testing in the cost of the first change. Sadly, they rarely want to pay for the re-test but always want the chain of problems fixed for free.

My computer!!

They're DONE! All the Use Cases for my current project are completed and submitted up the food chain for review and approval.

Now I get to do storyboards. Oh the joys of preparing for a major web site project.

This is insane! Trying to focus on writing Use Cases (when I really really HATE writing Use Cases) and worrying about the drive home. 26 miles over roads that are quickly becoming impassible.

At least management here at the Studio has some modicum of sense and is telling people to head home.

to try and write Use Cases on 4 hours sleep

After wrangling with my fellow code warriors over the re-design of our content management system for two hours, I went to a client preview of a major update to a web application I had done last year.

I have to say, it really made the day so much brighter to hear the client's enthusiastic Wow! when she saw what I had done. Maybe there is hope after all :)

R and I went to see a Chicago Rush game yesterday. He had won the tickets in a school contest and was really excited about going.

We got to the Allstate Arena about 15 minutes before the gates opened and had to stand outside waiting. With the wind chill, it felt more like January than March. ?? Global Warming ??

We got some popcorn and drinks and found our seats, they were on the upper deck in the corner by the south end zone. Not a bad view of the arena floor but very tight. I had difficulty fitting my legs into the space given.

The game was interesting even though the Rush fell apart in the third quarter and ended up losing the game. The best part of the day were the lessons that R learned: 1) Hang on to your bag of popcorn or it will spill all over the guy sitting in front of you (R apologized twice) and 2) Don't carry valuables in your coat pockets. He had his MP3 player in his coat pocket and in the course of taking off and putting on his coat in the limited space, it fell out. He didn't notice the loss until we were out of the arena and on the way to the car to go home.

Since it was my old 2GB Rio, I didn't think it was worth the effort to fight our way back to our seats against the crowd leaving, so we stopped and got a replacement on the way home. The new player got the name: Don't Lose Me ... with any luck the lesson will stick.

Spent the day playing Final Fantasy XI with R2D2. MMORPGs are cool because you can play a game with friends and family .. even when they are a thousand miles away.

Why is it that people who don't understand how computers work are fond of saying "Just wave your magic wand and make it work"? If it were only that easy.

But it IS Friday!

Most days my children bring happiness, energy and light into the house and then there are days like today where R "lost" his math homework. How do you lose your homework? We don't have a dog, so he can't claim that the dog ate it. How does he explain to his math teacher the lack of a completed homework assignment? Sheesh!

We wanted kids ... what were we thinking???

( My turn to play )
Not too sure I agree with *all* the negative traits

  Stayed up late to finish typing up the minutes for the last WindyCon meeting then got up early to go to a client's location this morning. No wonder the brain feels like a pipe full of sludge.