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    Wednesday, August 26, 2009

    True Determination

    Sometimes you know someone that lives through something that redefines for you what a word means. I had one of those experiences this week.

    A friend of mine, Nerissa, had to have a c-section with her first child. Her son was breach and wasn't budging. Nerissa had been completely prepared to do natural childbirth, having gone through classes to help her and her husband, Anthony, get ready. They were very disappointed when things didn't work out as planned.

    After their son was born, there were some nursing complications. Namely, their son could not latch on. Nerissa was determined, though, to do what was best for her child. She decided to syringe feed her son. She syringe fed him for 4 weeks while she attempted to teach him how to latch on. After 4 weeks of nursing failure, she shifted to sometimes bottle feeding her son pumped milk and sometimes syringing him. All the while she went about the painful process of trying to teach her son how to latch on. After 12 weeks of this, her son finally overcame his complications and was able to latch on.

    Fast forward the clock 2 years and Nerissa is pregnant again. Once again, she and Anthony are preparing to have a natural child birth, though this time Nerissa is categorized as higher risk VBAC. They had been preparing with the same material as last time and had literally been studying up. They were ready.

    Nerissa entered pre-labor on Friday (8-21-09). Due to the discomfort of labor, she was not able to sleep as her labor progressed. She went into active labor on Sunday, when she was admitted to the hospital. All this time she had very little rest.

    Upon entering the hospital, she was not allowed to eat and could only drink in sips. At this point, Nerissa was exhausted form all of the work that she had been doing, but she was only 3.5 cm dilated (where a woman needs to be close to 10 to deliver). She decided to continue on, however, in order to do what was best for her baby. She was so exhausted that she agreed to take some medicine for pain, in order to help her get some rest.

    She continued on, finally receiving a low-grade epidural so that she could sleep again on Monday night. Come Tuesday morning they broke her water in order to help her progress further, faster.

    By Tuesday afternoon the decision to deliver vaginally was taken from her hands, however, when she spiked a fever. Alas, Nerissa was wheeled into an operating room for her second c-section.

    My family and I were intimately involved with Nerissa's latest attempt to deliver, with Dalynn helping Nerissa and Anthony in the delivery room. I even got a chance to contribute by keeping their oldest son one night so the whole family could be at the hospital. They tried and tried, striving to continue where many others would have given up.

    Nerissa's latest attempt to deliver, combined with her struggles to nurse her first son, have really re-defined for me what the word determination means. In my mind determination was a thing of short time. It was OK to give up once you had said you tried.

    I don't believe I'll be able to take that stance anymore. Now, determination will forever be a thing of striving til there is no option left, til you either succeed or the opportunity is completely closed in your face. That kind of determination boggles my mind, and I feel truly blessed to have my perspective changed by Nerissa.

    I am happy to report that the c-section went well and that both baby and mother are recovering nicely. Their latest son is as healthy as can be and momma is already up and about. I do wish that Nerissa could have succeeded in her goal of delivering naturally, but I am so impressed that she persisted as long as she did. That's true determination.

    Sunday, August 23, 2009

    Vacation Day 9: Water Parks and Arcades

    Wednesday morning we ventured out to a water park called "Wild Water and Wheels". It's one of those combo parks with go-carts and bumper boats attached. Cole especially loved it. Logan had to warm up to it as the water in the kiddie pools were a little deep for him, but he eventually did just that. The neat thing about this park is that it had at least 3 kiddie pools with different things in them. We spent time in each, but the boys had the most fun in the pool that had a kiddie slide attached. We all played and played and played til the melt-downs started happening. We trucked it back home and had lunch, then put the kids down for naps.

    That afternoon we headed south of Myrtle Beach and went to Garden City. I have to admit, this turned out to be the pleasant surprise of the trip. We at first attempted to go to a place called "Crabby Mike's". It's a calabash seafood bar. It, however, was packed. We veered off and went instead to a Ryan's Steakhouse.

    It's been a long time since I've been to a Ryan's and I have to say that we will probably be going back. The food was good and the people were so nice. It's a buffet style setup so you can eat til you drop. I got a decent sirloin steak along with some other tasty sides and the boys enjoyed the food they ate. Dalynn, who is on some dietary restrictions due to nursing and her gall bladder, was able to eat her fill since there was such a variety. All in all, we all came away from Ryan's very happy.

    After that, we headed in to Garden City proper. Garden City is a quaint little beach village that is so typical of small beach towns. It's just far enough away from Myrtle that it's not built up and you can find some real gems there. One of those gems is where we were headed: The Garden City Pavilion.

    The Garden City Pavilion is an arcade with an attached grill. It's open air and the night was very comfortable. What really sets it apart, though, is that the employees are incredibly friendly. It's not the over-solicitous friendliness you find in a lot of places, it was the good, honest friendliness that you can often find in small towns. The boys each got $5 worth of tokens and they played skee ball and a bazillion other games for tickets. Cole actually surprised me by bringing in 50 tickets with one token on a game I tried to dissuade him from playing!

    The boys managed to cobble together 148 tickets and spending their tickets on loot was just an absolute blast. I used to work in an arcade, so they are near and dear to my heart and watching my boys spend their tickets with wild abandon was really a great thing for me and is something I relished.

    After the tickets were spent we bounced over to the grill for some ice cream. There again we found a wonderful woman who was so friendly. The boys and I each got a big ol' scoop of ice cream on a cone and we ate with zest. Dalynn got a smoothie, but the ice cream was better! We really, truly had a great time in Garden City and I would love to go back some day.

    As with everything on our trip, the water park, Ryan's and Garden City Pavilion were all provided due to Jason's House. Such an amazing time.

    Tuesday, August 18, 2009

    Vacatoin Day 8: Mirror Mirror

    We spent the morning in the lazy river and on the beach. It's amazing what long naps the boys are taking, it's like they're exhausted when they get in from the morning... Logan has been consistently taking 3.5 hour naps since we've been here, and Cole is pushing 3 consistently.

    Of course, I say consistently but we've only been here in Myrtle Beach for 4 days now. It seems much, much longer than that. There is so much to do here! It simply boggles the mind. I wish that we could come back for this when our kids are older, it would be so much more fulfilling. As it is we are still packing in every adventure we can, but when you have to be home by around 8 and when there's a 3 hour block taken out for naps, you're kind of limited to what you can do.

    The real adventure came this afternoon. After naps we headed out to Angelo's Steak and Pasta for a pasta buffet (once again, provided by Jason's House). It was good, but man, the kids were cranked up! I felt bad for the 2 couples sitting behind us and there were a few times where I was a tad embarrassed. Angelo's is a slightly upscale restaurant. Even Ava was getting in on the action, adding in periodic squeals and yells.

    With dinner down we headed to the strip! Street performers and little hole-in-the-wall shops and people crammed cheek-by-jowl. There were a lot of people there.

    Parking proved to be a challenge and boy, did I get lead like a lamb to the slaughter into this one. I was following the parking signs and made a "wrong" turn down a little alley. There, at the end, stood the gnarliest and most grizzled old coot I think I've ever seen wearing a yellow shirt and jeans and waving me on into a parking lot. I'm sure his name was something like Hank (pardon to all the Hanks out there). A little hand painted sign proclaimed "All day parking" for a two row dirt lot. I stopped and asked him how much, to which he pointed and said "He'll tell you."

    He was pointing to his counter-part. Where Hank was rail-thin, this other guy, who we'll call Bubba (pardon to all Bubbas out there) was overly portly, wearing a sweat-soaked grey shirt and shorts. Now, in all of this, I didn't notice the hook that they had put in my mouth. I meekly rolled our van into the slot that Bubba was standing next to, rolled down my window and asked "How much?"

    Bubba, looking all the world like a man who is being reasonable and even kind, replied "Ten dollars." If the man had been within biting distance I just might have bit him! Ten freaking dollars?!?! But, alas, I had taken the bait, our van was parked and my wife (bless her heart) thought it was OK to be taken advantage of in this manner. I think she said something like, "We don't have to pay for the Mirror Maze, we can afford to get ripped off this time."

    Resigning all dignity and manhood, I pulled my children out of the car, made my payment to Bubba, waved to Hank, and walked on to the evenings entertainment.

    That entertainment was Ripley's Mirror Maze! The picture today is from that same spot. Now, imagine with me: A dark room, cold as ice (and blessedly wonderful after the 90+ degree heat outside), 3D glasses and lots of neon light strips and mirrors. The room was layed out in a large group of triangles. A mirror (or glass) could be placed in a slot in the floor but the slot was there regardless. You would think that walking around in a bunch of mirrors would be easy, I mean, don't walk into yourself, right?

    Man, you couldn't be more wrong! Since the mirrors aren't dead-on facing you, you're often getting an image of the corridor to the side of you. At one point I almost walked into a mirror thinking Dalynn was in front of me, only to hear her at the last instant behind me to the right. What's worse, some of the slots are filled with just glass! Every time you had to step through one of the triangle sides you have this sensation like you're about to walk headlong into a sliding glass door.

    Cole thought it was the coolest thing ever. Logan, on the other hand, got about half-way through and started signing, "All done!" frantically. It was really completely disorienting and I imagine that for a 2 year old, with a more literal sense of the world, that's a very disturbing thing. Logan was ecstatic to get to the end and didn't want to go back in whereas Cole and I went back through 2 more times. It got easier the more you did it. You developed a sense of the space around you, it was quite strange.

    After that, we moseyed on over to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. Did you know that Ripley's got its start as a clearing house for freak shows? I found that out tonight. As did Cole. Do you know what kind of imagination Cole has? At one point we stepped on a pressure plate and a mummy coffin flew open and made a whooshing sound like a big-rig's brakes releasing. Cole bolted! He headed back the way we had come and I had to chase him down in the room we had been in last and drag him physically back through the mummy room. When we hit the same pressure plate again he started screaming.

    Do you know what my precious wife did? She laughed. Hysterically. For a long time.

    We hustled through that museum after that, only stopping in a room that spun on it's horizontal axis. It left you with the impression that you, and not the room, were spinning. Cole didn't appreciate that very much. I had to carry both Cole and Logan through the rest of the museum after that.

    Now, Ripleys ain't run by a bunch of dummies, and I got a true sense of that tonight. The exit through the aquarium (also a Ripley's establishment) was through the gift shop. Did I mention that we didn't make it out without purchasing these awful guns that light up and make lots of noises (see the attached picture)? Well this freak show museum exited through an arcade. Do you know how hard it is to get a couple of toddlers out of an arcade without spending any money? It's impossible! So, we played ski ball and the like and someone donated us all of their tickets. We got the boys the typical junk that arcades are known for and headed home.

    All in all, a very good day!

    Monday, August 17, 2009

    Vacatoin Days 6 and 7

    First, today. We had a great day. This morning we went to Ripley's Aquarium (of "Ripley's Believe it or Not" fame). It was really, really cool and the boys had a blast. They have an aquarium tunnel that takes you on a moving walkway through a shark tank, which is just way too cool. Cole got a little frightened part way through but was all right by the time we left it.

    Next we headed over to Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate Logan's 2nd birthday. It was the perfect place to take Logan. He loves drums and guitars and they were in serious evidence there. He kept wanting to play the drums that they have hanging on the walls and he kept asking me to play the guitars they have there. They also brought him up in front of everyone and announced it was his birthday and had the whole restaurant scream "Happy Birthday!" to him. He loved every minute.

    We came home for an extended nap and then headed out to the indoor water area at the hotel next door to us. Cole loved the lazy river (which I have been hyping for a while) and Logan even went so far as to swim in the lazy river without me holding on to him (both boys have swimmies they swim with). It was a fun afternoon. Then, pizza, a little play, and bed.

    So, let's talk about yesterday, which was traumatic and almost a vacation killer. Let me set the stage.

    Our hotel is called "Holiday Sands". I don't know if it is associated with Holiday Inn, but that is the impression I received. We called about our room and the amenities and were told our room was a 2 bedroom with a kitchenette. We were also told that there were numerous pools and a lazy river on premises.

    Now, the last hotel I stayed in was a Holiday Inn, and it was new and nice. Dalynn has also recently traveled and she had a similar experience. All of this is to say that we were expecting a new and modern building and room.

    What we now have is a 30 year old building. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. It did lead to some disappointment on our part, though. I'm simply being transparent in order to set the stage and I am not at all ungrateful for what Jason's House has given us. What almost killed our vacation was the condition of the first room we were shown.

    It was filthy. There was hair all over the bathroom floor, it smelled of smoke and someone had been shaking and exploding soda cans on the ceiling. The balcony smelled like an ashtray and the carpet was in pitiful condition.

    We called the front desk as well as Jason's House and someone was sent up to clean, but it was too little, too late. Jason's House was told that there were no other rooms available and that we would have to make due. We decided to leave and head back to Wilmington. I was going to make a couple trips down to Myrtle Beach with the boys to do some of the attractions but we were going to cut our vacation short.

    Thank the Lord for the foresight and kindheartedness of Jason's House. They had put together a bag of toys for the boys. I put the bag on the floor and told them to go at it and Dalynn and I talked. We decided to take everyone down to the front desk and see what the management could do.

    Management came up with another room which we found acceptable. Thus, did we stay.

    Now, the layout of the room has lead to some comedy on the part of Dalynn and I. The entire suite is two rooms with a kitchenette and bathroom splitting them. There are no doors! There are only accordion sliders. We have put the boys in the larger of the two rooms and Ava in the smaller, in hopes that one waking up and fussing will not wake everyone.

    This has lead to the quite comical situation that when the kids are asleep Dalynn and I stand in the bathroom with the door shut to talk. We spent 45 minutes there this afternoon during nap time! It really is something to behold.

    In light of that our days are starting and ending with the kids' sleep schedule. So, it's early nights and early mornings.

    Seems that my typing is bothering both boys, so I'm going to call it a night.

    Saturday, August 15, 2009

    Vacation Day 4: Fishin'

    Cole and Logan really had a good time all day. We spent the morning with Ma' Fuller. Ma Fuller's house is not, how do you say, kid friendly? She has tons of little extremely breakable nick-knacks and keeping toddler hands off of them can be a disturbingly mind-assaulting task. I came prepared and herded the boys out into the back yard with some balls. We eventually ended up on the side porch and rolled/tossed the balls back and forth. It was actually a pleasant time, despite my misgivings of how I was going to entertain them. Thank God for toys!

    From there we went to Boomie's for some fishin'! We took a quick detour down to Wrightsville beach to visit a Wings and Trolly Stop, then we piled out onto the pier to the very end on the floating dock. I was videoing with one hand and attempting to keep all of my children on the dock with the other . There were a ton of boats in the water towing skiers and this made the dock bob. All told the boys were bouncing around like a bunch of druken' sailors.




    The expedition started slowly, but after a bit the boys both showed hot hands, bringing in numerous fish! Cole brought in a "rare" fish called something like a "Papanou". Other than that it was all pinfish (the type of fish Cole is reeling in in the video).

    Upon commencement of melt-downs we headed home and the boys slept til about 4, which is way later than they normally do. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the pool and then we went on to dinner at a nice seafood restaurant.

    All in all, it was a great day!

    Friday, August 14, 2009

    Vacation: Day 3

    Wow, what a day.

    The day started off bright and early as always at 6:30 am. I did get a little extra sleep, after we got the boys up and rolling, but we were all ready to roll by 7:30. It was on to the beach ASAP despite the rain and overcast. The boys were able to work out their fear of the water and after a couple hours Cole, Logan, Gary and I were all bouncing in and out of the waves on the shore. I actually had to start restraining the boys from going in too deep.

    With that we moved on to the pool where Cole honed his swimmie skills and Logan got used to wearing his. We swam for about an hour and then headed in for some lunch. My brother Todd showed up and so we all had some lunch.

    About 12 Logan was ready to drop and asked to go to bed, which is always so cute. "Bed. Me. Bed." Todd left shortly thereafter and Cole went down at 1. Dalynn and I grabbed a quick siesta and then Ava was up.

    From that point on, the day went a little crazy. I took Ava so Dalynn could take a shower. Ava and I woke Cole up after he'd been down for about 45 minutes. Cole was up and he, Ava and I then woke up Logan. So, no one really got a sufficient nap!

    I took the boys to the park and then we all piled into the van to go to a birthday party for some family friends. We went down to Wrightsville beach and the boys played, and played, and played, and played, and... Holy cow, we ran and ran til they were ready to drop. We left the beach at their normal bed time.

    We all got home, they got rinsed off and now their in bed. I have a good salad to eat. Man, I'm tired. I wonder if all of this vacation will be this exhausting? If it is, it'll be fine and we'll have an awesome time.

    Wednesday, August 12, 2009

    On the Road

    Today we left for our week and a half family vacation. This will be the first real family vacation we've ever taken. I'm quite excited and am ready to kick my feet up a little bit and do what relaxing I can with 3 children under the age of 4.

    On the right you'll see a picture of what the back of our van looked like before we left. If you can believe it we had the middle of the van completely full, too! As one friend asked, "Was there room for the kids?" Yes, on the roof. Some full coverage face masks and they were good to go. Cole wouldn't have abided bugs in the teeth...

    We headed south towards the Port City! We had a stop-off in Washington, NC to see Grammy for about an hour, and then we headed on down to Wilmington, NC to spend several days with Granddaddy Gary and Gradma Ira.

    The really cool part of our trip comes Sunday, though (not that half a week spent on the beach of Wilmington isn't cool). We have been blessed with a trip by an organization and ministry called Jason's House. Jason's House is in the business of giving week long trips to Myrtle Beach to the families of children with cancer.

    We're being put up in a Holiday Sands on the beach with a ton of amenities. We'll be given a stack of coupons for food and attractions as well as some cash to even things out. We're being put up for a week. To say we're stoked is an understatement.

    I'll be keeping you updated throughout our

    Monday, August 10, 2009

    An Analyst's Development Environment


    Here in the land of academic research we're working with a "new" take on mashups. It seems like a no-brainer to me but a lot of people have expressed interest and surprise when I explain to them what we're doing. For now let's call it an analyst's development environment (ADE).

    One thing that mashups are really, really good at is taking disparate data sources and allowing "momentary" relationships in the sources to be created. This in effect creates a new data source that is a fusion of the inputs. As is often the case in fusions, this new source tends to be more than just the sum of the parts. You often come up with new views on the data as you add extra sources.

    Most people stop here at the fusion stage. Once they have the new view onto the data they rely on other tools outside the scope of a mashup to do interesting things. They might pipe that data into a tool such as Fusion Charts in order to visualize it or they might pipe it into an analysis tool such as a model or sim. But, why do they need to leave the scope of the mashup to do this? What if that analysis or the creation of the Fusion Charts XML was an automated part of the mashup itself?

    Mashups deal with web services primarily (though there are some nifty products out there that allow you to mash more than just web services). A web service is usually considered to be a data source. But, in practice they are much more than that. Consider all of the specialized web services provided by Google for geolocation or Amazon for looking up aspects of books. The simplest example I can give you is Google's web service which converts an address to a lat and long pair (called geocoding). With these in mind let's take a different look at web services. Let's look at them as processing units.

    A processing unit has 3 criteria: it takes input; does something interesting with that input; and provides output. Processing units are the basis of modern programming. They're known as methods, functions, procedures, etc. depending on context. We can most often build bigger processing units from simpler units.

    Web services fit these 3 criteria handily. You can easily provide input, they can easily do something interesting with that input and then just as easily provide output. All communication is done in a standardized protocol driven environment.

    The interesting thing about web services is that we can string them together (with the right tools) rather easily into processes. That's exactly what we're doing here. Each web service is either a data source or a processing unit. Given the ability to ferry data from one web service to the next (in an easy way) it is possible to create mashups that do more than just mash data. They actually do some form of processing.

    Consider what it would be like if you had a web service endpoint attached to a model? You could pre-mash your data from various sources then run it all through the model and create a new output that would be very interesting. It would be so easy.

    Using Presto we recently put together a demo which worked along these lines. It made our demo come together in several weeks rather than over several months. We used Presto to access databases then ferried that data (in XML format) into a custom built web service that took said data and ran XSL transforms on it. That produced Fusion Charts XML which we then piped into our presentation layer for visualization. It was easy.

    Here is a diagram of what the actual flow of the mashup was.

    Here is a screen shot of the actual chart produced by the generated Fusion Charts XML.


    An ADE would work in a similar way. Using provided tools which allow for ferrying of data from one endpoint to another and given a grab-bag of analysis and transformation web services an analyst could create some amazing things with little effort or technical know-how. The only developer support would be in the creation of any custom web services. It could be a very powerful tool.