NYE

So, what does a new father do on New Years Eve? Nothing, he stays home and enjoys his family. And that's just what I'm going to do.

Old is new again

Last night, I picked up an old Ariens ST504 snow blower. I hope it runs well. Let's see what it can do for me with the 7" of snow that is predicted today...

Back to the grind...for good

So my time working from home all week is over with. It's back to the grind. --No more exceptions, no more time to get used to being a parent. Get used to it.-- At least I have this unusual time of year (from a few days before Christmas until a few days after New Years) where the office is at a reduced capacity and tensions are eased. That's a bonus I guess.

X-Mas Eve dilemma

What to do, what to do? Each year, my wife and I are torn. Both sides of our family celebrate more on the Eve as opposed to Day. That ushers in all sorts of decisions:
-How do we break up Christmas Eve?
-How does Christmas Day factor in?
-Should we rotate each year?
-What about when we have children?

Growing up, our two families have taken similar paths; Christmas Eve is when the entire extended family gathers for many hours and then on Christmas Day each individual family does its own thing at home or whatever. Each Christmas in the past, we have basically split the day in half. We go to her side from 12-5pm and then to my side of the family from 6-10pm. I feel this works, she does not.

She feels like she has to constantly look at her watch and is on a schedule. Now that we are parents, it's even more difficult to pull this off. Amanda will be only two weeks old on Christmas Eve Eve. Our pediatrician told us to avoid contact with "large groups" for the first five weeks of her life. She is susceptible to catching illness. That begs the question, "What is a large group?"

Katie's side of the family has seven children ranging in ages from 7 to 17. In the past, she's been bitten several times at this very event. We were deathly ill on December 26, 2004 when the tsunami hit Southeast Asia. What great birthday memories I have...

I have a feeling that we are simply going to stay home on Christmas Eve and phone in our greetings. It's particularly tough on me as I would love to show off our newborn. It's quite rare that you have a child just before a major family gathering and have the opportunity to share with everyone at the same time what a joyous and special present you've received this year.

Comcast, part 7

Why part seven, you ask? I was too frustrated to write about the five visits between the first and the last and wanted to wait till I had resolution to comment with hind-sight... Anyhow, I finally have two single-stream CableCards(tm) working in my HD TiVo. Let's recap the visits:

1 (Wednesday) - CC's brought, but none worked. Rescheduled for Thursday.
2 (Thursday) - No CC's brought because the dispatcher did not include it on the list even though I clearly said my CC's are not working. Luis must have felt compelled to do something, so he checked my signal strength and removed splitters he deemed "bad". Rescheduled for Friday.
3 (Friday) - Reg was helpful, he got one multistream card to work, but it would only tune my local channels; very odd. Rescheduled for Saturday; told dispatcher to have tech bring 10 CC's to try to get this to work.
4 (Saturday) - Luis arrived for the second time with CC's and got one to work, but the second one did not work. So, I can tune one HD cable channel at this time. Not bad, but want two... Rescheduled for Monday.
5 (Monday) - Tech 5048 arrived with CC's but none of them worked. He did notice that I was not getting all my channels - Encore to be specific. He fixed that for me. Bonus. Rescheduled for Tuesday.
6 (Tuesday) - Mike arrived (best-spoken tech so far, I must have been escalated), but did not have CC's with him. I did not let him in the house. He explained that the warehouse was exhausted of them and they were burning them today so they would be available tomorrow. He asked if I wanted a digital cable box in case I was not getting any feeds at all. I told him that it would be a parallel move since I can tune one digital channel at the moment. I simply want to be able to tune two. I rescheduled for Wednesday, my first day back at work.
7 (Wednesday) - Tech 5048 again, he also wanted to check my signal strength before even attempting to insert a CC; he didn't like the look of a splitter in my basement. Man, these guys push to accomplish SOMETHING when there is no work to be done. They must be told to "tidy up" in the event that they cannot actually complete the work they were dispatched to do. He also had an apprentice with him; a young fella that spoke only when spoken to and was basically there to be a statue. Maybe I was frightening and he brought muscle with him for defense. I don't know. All this signal-checking made me nervous as I arrived home from work; it is usually an indicator they are not able to accomplish what I want them to do. In the end, the second card was activated and all was right with the world.

Could you imagine the amount of lost time and money I would have incurred if I were not working from home on as a new father? Let's just say it would be huge.

Back to work

On the train, headed into the office after working from home for 7 business days. Its the longest I've been away in over two years...

A Grandmothert's touch

My mom stopped over for dinner tonight and Amanda was a mess - crying bloody murder. All the usual tricks failed to sooth her. Moms wrapped her up and all was right in the world. She slept over 3 hours! That's huge...

Comcast, part 1

I had this bright idea; upgrade to an HDTV, get a new HD TiVo and then upgrade cable to get high definition... Which one of the three previous statements was difficult to do? You go it - Comcast.

HD TiVo uses CableCARDs(tm) which is a technology that's been around for years now, but seldom adopted. Comcast techs know very little about them and (after reading up on message boards) they don't work very well. Sometimes they work for a day, then poop out. Or, like my experience, they don't work at all out of the box.

I had an appointment for a visit yesterday. The tech came, inserted the card, the TiVo recognized it as a MultiStream CableCARD(tm) and began to download "something". It was taking a long time to download whatever these segments were so I told the technician that if I had any issues, I would call. He gave me his cell phone number and off he went.

The card did not successfully authorize, initialize or whatever. I called the tech, but it was 3pm by this point and he was probably out drinking some fine Russian vodka and smoking cigarettes by then. Either way, he didn't answer. So, I scheduled an appointment for today noting that my CableCARDs(tm) were not working. I called Comcast to see if they could "hit" or restart my card, but they see the card as looking good on their end of the world so they cannot help much. I remember having cable modem issues in the past and tech support could go in and touch the cable modem easily. I guess CableCARDs(tm) are not that savvy.

The tech today came thinking I had a signal issue; he was not told to bring cards with him and so I have yet another visit for 10am tomorrow. Good thing I'm home with a newborn or this would get frustrating in a hurry. I called Comcast support several times trying to find a way that I could drive to a store to exchange the card on my own. No such luck. Since I live outside of Chicago, there are no brick and mortars where that can be done. It must be a tech visit. So, I'll cross my fingers and continue to watch crappy analog cable on my 52" HD set.

Second night...improvement

Our second night at home as parents improved. Of course, as the father, I have a distinct point of view here - I don't have the ability to breast-feed my child. As we are on a strict regiment of no-bottle; even if I wanted to help out, I couldn't. I am left to tend to household matters of laundry, dishes, vacuuming, cats, etc. All the great tidying up that must go on. I run errands, try to keep up with the office and support in any way I can. I'm amazingly alert for having much-interrupted sleep for nearly a week. My last good night of sleep from last Friday, but I digress.

Lawn

If the stork brings the baby, who brings the stork? Well, in my case it's my best friend Brian. What great people I have surrounding me...

Rough first night

What a wakeup call being home is. Mail, garbage, laundry, housecleaning, dishes.... Geeze, can't we just focus on our daughter? Not likely.
While I cannot say we really slept our first night, we did get some rest. Rest in the sense of being able to relax.

Travel

On our way home. Weather is less than ideal... It's sloppy, raining, dark and cold.

Departure

We just got word that both mom and baby are cleared for discharge from the hospital. All things are looking good. I'm not sure that we are ready to go home, yet. We've had such a support team for the past 48 hours here in the hospital. We'll be on our own, soon...

Arrival

5:40am
6 pounds 15 ounces
21 inches long
Amanda Marie

Great progress

9cm at 3am...

ER

Arrived at ER. She's already at 6cm...

Contractions

She's starting to have contractions 30 seconds long, 10 minutes apart... Looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel for our child.

HD is mine

52" of glory...