Sunday, October 29, 2006

Things look good, relatively speaking

It's Sunday and we had a pretty good night last night. Jay slept almost through the night, unfortunately for him, the clock was set back for an hour so it was still 6 in the morning when he woke up.
I think everybody here slept okay, which is good. Olcay is doing okay, but is still in quite some pain.

E-One

Today's cookie: You Can Turn Back The Clock But Not Time Itself

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Lumbago is the party-pooper

Hi,

It's been a tough week this week. Monday started out great, and work was fine as well. You've read about last weekend in Rotterdam.
Then the bad stuff started. The night from Monday to Tuesday Jay woke up at around 445 AM and Olcay brought him his pacifier. While putting him back to bed, she got a really bad case of Lumbago, and the excruciating pain started. She couldn't move and was stuck between Jay's bed and the chair. I was barely able to get her onto the chair since every move she made was accompanied with so much pain, you just can't imagine. All this time, Jay was really great. He some way understood that something terrible was going on and was just lying there in his bed, quietly. After Olcay was back to bad, crying of pain, Jay didn't want to be left alone, so I took him with us, and he stayed at my side of the back all night, which is very uncommon. Typically he moves to Olcay's side and starts playing with her face (stomping on and pulling at her nose etc).
Tuesday was really bad. I didn't go to work. Fortunately Jay was at the day-care, and didn't have to see his mom like the way she was. In pain all the time. The only bearable position she could lie in was on her stomach. The paracetamol was not really the pain relief it should be and since she's pregnant, it was the only medicine she was allowed to take.
Tuesday afternoon the doctor came by and she was doing fairly well, compared to that morning. He'd heard her cry thru the phone while I was calling him. He knew how bad it was and if things would stay that way, or got even worse we should call again and he would prescribe some morphine. Wednesday it was this bad, and we called the doctor again. Late in the afternoon the prescription was ready and she had some tiny dose. After that there was some pain relief and she could get some sleep. Thursday she could move a bit and turn onto her back. Now do mind, that she'd been lying more or less in the same position for over 48 hrs.
Thankfully my in-laws came over on Wednesday and took care of Jay and helped me with Olcay, making sure I could at least get some sleep at night. Wednesday night my parents came over which was great. It was a great mental help having them around for just a little while.
Things are getting better now, but still aren't great. Yesterday the doctor visited again, and Olcay has to stay of the morphine. It's just not good for the baby.
All the time Jay was really the one that cheered us up big time. He was giving Olcay kisses and small pads on her back. He just knows that something bad is going on and he knows he has to be careful around his mother at this time.

On a more positive note, yesterday Jay and I attended Olaf and Desiree's wedding. Olaf is my youngest brother and the last of the three of us to get married. It was a great day. I was driving them so witnessed most of it from close by. Jay was during that time with my parents. He was great. Fairly quiet during the ceremony and really great during the party at night. He was up all night and didn't get cranky or whatever. We had a great party and everybody was really feeling bad Olcay wasn't there. She was supposed to be the MC of the night, but we now all know why that didn't happen.

E-One

Today's cookie: Split seconds can have a lifetime's impact

Monday, October 23, 2006

How to spend a weekend to make it a great weekend

Hi,

Back from an incredible weekend. Yesterday was our 4th aniversary and since it's an even number, it was Olcay's turn to set up the surprise. And some surprise it was.
Let's recap the weekend. Friday we had our second-opinion for the sonograph, and as it turned out, one of the kidneys of the baby is healthy and working properly. Which is GREAT. So that was good news, and after a quick stop at the AMC in Amsterdam, where we had some blood samples taken, we took Jay to my parents and left him there. By the way, he had a great weekend at his grandparents.
We then took of to what eventually turned out to be Rotterdam without any significant traffic jams, and the navigator took us to 'Stroom', a designer hotel which is in one word 'Absolutely fabulous'. We were going to stay in one of the Vide Studio, a two level room. The whole room was one big designer-statement. Really extremely cool. Friday night we watched 'Lucky Number Slevin'. We took that DVD with us, and played it on the beamer. Yup, this is a hotel where they've got beamers installed in your room. By the way, its a great movie.
Saturday we spend most of the day in Rotterdam downtown, looking for some boots for Olcay, she 'needed' a new pair for Olaf's wedding. The evening was spend watching 'Syriana'. Interesting plot, well acted, good fun to watch.
Sunday we had breakfast in bed, while watching Discovery Channel, some show on Oceans and the fish living in them. Good fun and as it would turn out, we were going to Blijdorp, Rotterdam Zoo, and saw a lot of fish that all of a sudden looked very familiar.
Last night we had dinner at 'De Bokkedoors', a very chique restaurant in Overveen (neer Zandvoort) which appearantly has two Michelin stars. Well all I can say is that we had a great dinner. Most notable of that dinner, besides being with Olcay, was the tea she had. It was some flower that she had to put in the hot water and would then bloom. The tea was lovely, the sight awesome.
And finally, Jay slept through the night and woke up at 6 in the morning. Thanks Jay, that made our weekend truely perfect.

So that's for my weekend. Full of surprise.

E-One

Today's cookie: Even When Something Is Inevitable, It Is Still Unknown If You Will See It Happen.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Thank god for foggy eyes in the morning. Why? Because the misses thought it was 6 o'clock while it was 5 o'clock. She took care of Jay, allowing me another 45 minutes of sleep, which turned out to be an hour and 45 minutes :) But then again, her new way of calming down Jay when he wakes up, a cheerfull "Go back to sleep Jay!" somewhere in the middle of the night is not helping to get a nights worth of sleep either.

Traffic was good this morning, didn't have to slow down to a crawl that often. Maybe the police car waiting to ticket somebody at the intersection of the A1 and A6 had something to do with it. I don't know. Anyhow, it took me slightly over 30 minutes, which is a respectable time.

Have a great day,
E-One

Today's cookie: For The Ambitious The Best Is Not Good Enough

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Good morning. It's 836 in Amsterdam and it has been a great night... NOT. Jay's been keeping us awake all night. It started somewhere around 345 and around 430 he seemed to be asleep again. That was when I thought "Hmmm, 2 hours of sleep left", but 5 minutes later he proved me wrong. At 530 I gave up being hopefull of more sleep and just tried to sleep. Now I'm still wondering what was going on.
On the bright side, he woke me up with a kiss at 630. After all he's a great kid and seeing his smile in the morning makes up for a lot of the night. I just hope that tomorrow morning there is nothing for him to make up to.

E-One

Today's cookie: Sometimes Not Sleeping Does Not Mean You Are Awake

Monday, October 16, 2006

The weekend is over, its Monday. How the weekend was? Not very eventfull. Worst of all is that Jay's still not completely recovered from the flu. Saturday his temperature was at 39.7 Celsius, which for all you Fahrenheit people is too high, but not extreme. Altough it seemed that he was doing fine, earlier that day, good night of rest. But in the evening we had a great time together carpenting. Yup, it was a father-son experience of the best kind and we built a Lego-crate. 80x40x30 cm big, and plenty of room left for more Lego. It was great to see him march around and trying to handle the power-screwdriver. It didn't take him long to understand how it's operated.

Saturday night was a night of Sticktailing and quite some progress was made. IFF (Identified: Friend or Foe) is coming along just nicely. But as usual when developing is going smoothly, time moves on swiftly.

Yesterday was a day of relaxing and playing with Jay. Great fun as you may expect. He was still not 100% and still isn't. The night started off horrible with Jay waking up every 10 minutes looking for a familiair face. At last we took him with us in bed and that was an improvement, at least for me. Thankfully I'm blessed with a wonderfull sleep.

That's my weekend for you, as I said, not very eventfull. Oh before I forget, I had a traumatic experience, but I don't want to detail about that too much. I don't want to spoil this blog with such horrors, try 'The Fingers' instead. It's less horrific.

E-One

Today's cookie: True Believers Never Need Proof

Friday, October 13, 2006

Friday, end of the week. Although this week has been a short week workwise.

Last Wednesday has been a tough day. Jay was and still is ill. Probably the flu or something. He's running a fever, but fortunately the Paracetamol is doing miracles. Still it is very sad to see him like this, especially when the medicine is not kicking in yet.
Another reason why Wednesday was tough is because we went to the hospital to get a sonograph of our baby. The level of protein found during the amniocentesis was a bit high and had to be investigated further. On the sonograph we saw that one of the baby's kidneys has not developed properly, and initially the doctor thought that both kidneys were suffering from this. That was some devastating news, it would mean dialysis right from the moment it would be born. Later on, after more than an hour of looking and checking the other kidney was diagnosed healthy and working properly. We were so relieved, I can tell you that much.

After the sonograph I went to the NLJUG's J-Fall. Fortunately I was arrived right before lunch, so no standing in line here and food a plenty. It was a great and interesting day. You can read more on my NetBeans related blog 'The NetBeans Experience'.

Yesterday was daddy's day. Usually Jay and I go for a swim in the morning and have some good time together in the afternoon. Lately Olcay's not working on Thursdays, so we spend the afternoons as a family. But yesterday was different in that Jay was ill, and Olcay had to go to work. But still Jay and I had a great day, thanks to the Paracetamol. I had a business conference call in the morning, while Jay was asleep. The afternoon was just son-and-dad. Playing with Lego, his cars and just having fun together. He's the best.

So that is about it. Don't forget to also read a new episode of 'The Fingers' that I'll publish in a few minutes.


Enjoy your day,
E-One

Today's cookie: One Has To Know In Order To Prepare

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Hi all,

(There will be a baby-spoiler at the end of this blog)

I'm back from my trip to Chicago. I had a great time meeting my friends again. It had been over 2 years since the last time we met. I had a great time, thanks guys. The flight to the US was uneventfull, although the United Airlines provided headset sucked big time. The movies were okay, but not really enjoyable since the sound was 'one ear only', thankfully I had a good book (Splinter Cell - Operation Baracuda) and for a big part I slept thru the flight. I flew via Dulles (Washington DC) and it was there where I learned that I needed to place all fluids in a basket. I was halfway there in that I put it all in a Ziplock.

So what did I do? For one we went to see some movies; The Guardian, the first Kevin Costner movie I really liked since No way out. It's about the US Coast Guard. We also went to see The Departed the latest Scorcese movie staring Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro. This is a great movie, you should go see it. Interestingly enough, everytime I'm in Chicago I see a movie staring Matt Damon. Saturday we went to see School for Scoundrels which is a comedy and we had quite a few laughs. All three movies are worth seeing.
Besides going to the movies, we went shopping. Big time. Those outlets are great, but downtown Chicago has some great stores as well. For example the Lego store is excellent, you can buy lego by the bucket. Borders made some money on me as well, I got some books from there and enjoyed an Espresso dopio. I had to shop for an additional bag since I bought more than anticipated.

E-One

Today's cookie: An Untold Story Is A Story Unheard Of.

Baby-spoiler: I was right all the time, Jay will have a little brother.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Another day in blogosphere.

Things are happening these days. To start of with the hottest news from the press: The Fingers went back online again. The story will be told at: The Fingers, the place where I will be publishing my Psycho Thriller novel.

Yesterday Olcay and I expected a call from the AMC Amsterdam regarding the amniocentesis Olcay had 3 weeks ago. We're anxious to find out whether Jay's going to have a little brother (my money is on this result) or a sister (Olcay's money is on that result). And more importantly, the reason we had the amniocentesis is that we'll find out if everything is okay with the fetus. As you may have guessed, we didn't get that call.

Then there is yesterday, we had an online conference using Skype. We in this case are the partners of jForay, a new partnership of free minds that roam the IT universe. Seriously, about 9 months ago, Marcel, Ezra, Frank and myself started thinking about joining forces. At that time we were all independent contractors and had to deal with a lot of hassle with the Dutch tax agency, the UWV, and agencies. We started talking with people from Accon about what we could do best to circumvent the various pitfalls and traps a contractor in Holland faces these days. These talks resulted in setting up jForay, a partnership of the 4 of us. We meet online using Skype every 2 weeks and yesterday was one of those meetings.
Probably the most important subject of discussion was the fact that the final partnership contract was received by me and is now to be signed by all partners. Probably the most discussed about subject was setting up the email server. Everybody started sending out there IP addresses to Marcel to configure the firewall, Marcel was sending out URLs to configure Outlook and he spammed me with MX records. Yesterday at this very time I didn't have a clue what an MX record is, now I have some clue.

That's about it for today.

E-One

Today's cookie: A Solved Mysterie Is Not A Mysterie At All

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

So this is my second blog, not the daily routine that I envisioned it to be... yet. But I'll try to better myself.

So what's going on? Well for one, traffic's been a killer today and yesterday. Guess the rainy season has started and people are all confused about it. I just hope it'll be better soon. Anyway, I'll be flying to Chicago in two days, so that's going to be fun. It has been a long time since I went there, visiting friends.

Nothing more for today, maybe tomorrow it'll be more interesting to read this blog.

E-One

Today's cookie: Knowing What Is Right Means Nothing When You Are Not Doing What Is Right.