We stopped down to Jen’s father’s house this weekend to install his new DSL modem and get his laptop set up to be on the internets. Afterward, we sat around in the kitchen and swapped stories.
My father seemed to be doing much better during the first half of last week, until early Wednesday morning when he was found wandering the hall pushing his drip tree, unable to remember why he was in the hospital. After some new testing, it was found that his C02 levels were still high and that he was not exhaling hard enough while sleeping, thus starving his bloodstream of oxygen.
A new breathing machine was rustled up and prescribed for the following night, and the change was dramatic. The other bit of good news is that the chest tube will (hopefully) be coming out today and he can heal up completely. Now, the only problem will be braving the ice storms to get him home.
This is possibly the coolest thing I’ve seen so far this year. A man takes a 60’s vintage GI Joe astronaut and capsule, and shoots them into space. (well, almost.)
At an undisclosed location in upstate New York. There’s a For Sale sign in the window, but the number is blacked out, which leads me to believe it’s not on the market anymore. The fins on this car are HUGE.
MIT has been offering their courses online as open-source material for several years now. While I think this is fantastic, and that I’d love to go through these and learn about quantum physics, I doubt I will ever have the discipline or time management skills to do so.
Oh, thank GOD we stuck with Cingular Wireless. I am going to buy myself an iPhone as soon as I can afford one and ditch my thankless Motorola 551, and it will be a Good Day. OSX (Safari on a phone!) Touchscreen dialing, bluetooth, improved contacts, syncing with my Mac and more. I only hope the reception is better than a RAZR. This sounds too good to be true, honestly.
Here’s a Flickr set of vintage travel labels-I’d guess prewar. Beautiful stuff. There are tons of them here, too. (via)
Well, I’d have a ton of nice photos to share of my father, the spooky house across the street from my parents’, and some artsy-fartsy TTL shots of the family, but the memory card in my Canon up and died this afternoon with a mysterious “Card Format Error” message and the dreaded Yellow Questionmark Of Death. So, you’ll have to settle for some family photos.
My Dad is doing very well; when last we left him, he was sitting upright in a chair, surveying the wreckage of his turkey dinner, and waiting for the nurse to decide it was time to move him back to the bed. All signs point to “better”, including his lung capacity, appetite, skin color, and personality. This whole excercise has been nervous-making but he seems to be coming through fine, and we’re hoping it will lead to a serious improvement in quality of life for him. So keep your fingers crossed.
In the meantime, before the memory card blew up, I found a feature of my Canon I hadn’t noticed previously, and started experimenting again with through-the-lens shots with my Duoflex II. The manual focus feature seems to fix on the very closest of the details in the picture plane, while leaving the distant ones blurry. I have to do a lot more experimenting with it to refine the technique.
Rebuilding an iPhoto library. Summary: back everything up before you do so, because apparently, bad things can happen.
Over a tray of clear liquids, which is a good sign. His appetite is strong and he’s looking much better.