Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

It's official. Dana has left Amgen. Early last fall she interviewed for a legal internship at a large intellectual property focused law firm in Denver. In December they finally gave her the word that they wanted her. Although she tried to take a Leave of Absence for the semester-long internship, the good people in Amgen's middle management couldn't come to agreeable terms. So Dana said a fond "sayonara" to all the friends she made over the last 5 years in Longmont, and packed up her rubber gloves and little magnetic molecule models, and left biotech manufacturing behind.

We'll miss her pretty good health benefits, but I expect she won't miss a start time of 6am.

This week she's recovering, and preparing for her new internship, along with the usual studying and cooking and keeping her two boys happy.

I am flying to Houston tomorrow (Tuesday) for a business trip til Friday. Dana's Mom Susan is here to help out in my absence, and she and Ryanne appear to be getting along famously. I'm dreading this trip -- I'm to give a presentation Thursday about the 1/2 of my job that I really don't care for much, open source middleware. I need to ask my boss Phil if I can transition that part of my job to somebody else and pick up something new and fresh and exciting. I'm the "last man standing" on the engineering side, at least in the US. It's no fun, because the program has been starved for resources by management, to the point that we really can't even maintain our current position and offerings. Add to that huge changes recently in the marketplace, and we just cannot keep up. It is depressing, and even if business was doing great, I'm just tired of the subject matter. I've been doing this since before Dana and I got married, and I'm ready for a breath of fresh air.

But enough complaining. We'll have fun in Houston. If anyone in Houston wants to get together, drop me a line. I'm incredibly disorganized this week and haven't even finished the presentation I'm giving on Thursday, but I should have a few hours here and there (Densmores I'm looking vaguely in your direction).

Today I got the recessed light bezels in the mail for the closet upstairs. I kept trying to order these from online stores, and everyone had a minimum order of something like $100. Well, the two light covers together were less than $50, so no dice. But I finally found them at Beverly Hills Electric, for a decent price, and ordered them last week. Even Home Depot couldn't get these Halo 4" shower covers! Well, as soon as I opened the box tonight I knew I had nailed it. They look great. They will satisfy the building inspector (if I ever see him again...). It is yet one more step closer to actually finishing my crazy project upstairs. Now we pretty much just need heat. Grrr.. Don't get me started on the heating contractor. They went out of business last year. They promised me they'd take care of me anyway. I have to call them again...

I decided to also strip the white paint off the inside of the old closet door that now serves as a passageway into the bathroom from the new front bedroom. I'm about 60% done, and then I need to stain and polyurethane it. I figured since I was already staining and finishing several other pieces of trim in the room, I might as well finish the job. Paint remover, even the "All natural" stuff, is horrible.

Daddy's Other Other Project

Today the other shoe dropped, and I can talk about the OTHER project I've been working on, http://www.fossbazaar.org/ Whew! We finally kicked that thing out the door. It's all about open source software governance.

HP has put a lot of effort into figuring out how to manage our own use, adoption, integration and distribution of open source software. HP realized that this expertise was more useful to us if we shared it openly with everyone, because the ecosystem will benefit greatly from more well-informed participants, who are neither heedlessly plunging into the fray because "hey, it's free!", nor those who are too afraid of the (very real) risks to even consider the benefits of using open source software. So we released our internal toolset, FOSSology, as open source software last month. This is a set of tools that allow you to analyze any piece of software to understand what open source licenses are involved. Over time it will evolve to do even more, such as uncovering little snippets of re-used code that are copied from one place or another.

Meanwhile FOSSBazaar is a community of people working together to promote best practices in open source software use and adoption, particularly within the corporate IT world, but also across the board.

It should be fun seeing both of these initiatives grow.

FOSS = Free and Open Source Software. This is software that is developed by people from all over in an open, collaborative approach. Generally, no one company or entity controls the development of a particular project, but individuals and people from various companies and organizations work on a project together. To give you a little perspective, most of what we think of today as "the Internet" is built and maintained using open source software, such as the Apache web server that is hosting this blog right now. Other examples include the Linux operating system, and the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Nearly every service that Google and Yahoo offer is run on open source software. Increasingly, businesses around the world, in every industry, are realizing that many of the things they do now with software from a single vendor like Microsoft, Oracle, HP or IBM, can be done just as well if not better, and for far less overall investment, using competitive open source software. We've seen the financial services industry making the shift, airlines, manufacturers, the entertainment industry, governments, and yes, even big oil.

Daddy's Other Project

I guess I can finally talk about it. My project at work is getting some good press:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/18/HP-launches-FOSS-tracking-project_1.html

New Year's Progress

It's time for an update on some past projects and past milestones for Alex.

First to the projects:

Some detectors! I finally had a chance to wire in the new AC smoke detectors. These were not originally part of the remodeling project upstairs, but since the building code required them, I thought I'd better add them. Now that they're in, I'm very pleased, and they're not hard at all to install, at least if you have ready access to the attic.

Which brings up one of the little "gold plating" parts of the project, which I also hadn't originally planned for, but I am tickled pink that I did anyway.

When I redesigned the front bedroom, I obliterated the old attic scuttle (a.k.a. "corpse hatch") that had been in the old bathroom linen closet, so needed some new way to get to the attic. I could have just built in a new scuttle somewhere out of the way, but with one fewer closet, that was becoming quite tricky. Instead I opted for a very classy set of attic stairs accessible from the upstairs hallway.



This is the unobtrusive access door, closed. It blends in pretty seamlessly with the hallway ceiling, if I do say so myself. I chose a special aluminum scissors stair that folds up very compactly, thus allowing for a considerably smaller opening than a comparable set of traditional folding wooden stairs. They are made in Hungary, in case you're curious.

Here I am opening the hatch. The stairs are spring-loaded so they won't accidentally unfold on an unsuspecting visitor. They roll out about 6 inches when you open the door, then stop. But it's still enough to give guests a real scare when they pull the door down. :-)


































These last two show the attic itself; Since I now have this easy access to the attic, I figured I'd better make use of that space. So I've been slowly installing plywood decking over the new bedroom to provide some additional storage space (for lighter items -- no old law books!)

I've also been busy filling, sanding, and staining the woodwork in the new closet. It's now ready for a coat of polyurethane. Unfortunately the can I had in the garage apparently "went bad" - not sure if it's not supposed to freeze, or what, but it looked like cottage cheese and snot mixed together, and it was solid. So I'm off to Home Depot to get a new can.

Before I forget, a few updates on Alex:



Alex is not willing to show us his new teeth, but trust me, they're there! He's now working on some up top. Someday I'll get a picture - maybe by the time he's 15 or so.

In other news, Dana and I realized this weekend that he no longer has a stuffy nose all the time. Up until about 9 months, he always had a sniffly nose, especially at night when sleeping. His breathing would be somewhat troubled. Now, assuming he has no cold, he is breathing normally.

Also for a long time one or both of his eyes were goopey, particularly in the mornings. His doctors said it was just a clogged tear duct and would go away. Sure enough, we haven't noticed any eye goop in several weeks.

Finally, I'm reluctant to report it, lest I jinx it, but he has been sleeping soundly through the night for the last couple of weeks, give or take a night. We are hoping this is a new trend!!


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Put Your Hands Together

Alex learned how to clap, and he loves it

Banana Technology

Dan's Banana Smoothies

4 ripe bananas
1/2 -1 cup unsweetened soymilk
1/2 - 1 cup plain yogurt
1 -2 handfuls ice

In a blender, place bananas, soymilk, yogurt, and then ice (in that order!). Blend until smooth. Drink. Makes about 2 huge glasses. Perfect for lingering sore throat.

You can substitute just about any liquid for the soymilk and any edible, gooey substance for the yogurt.

Babies like it too


More cute pictures of Alex from this week:


Alex schmoozing with the DU Law students

Sick After the Holidays

Yet another pictureless post. I came down with a cold last week around Wednesday that Alex picked up on Friday night. He has had a fever and stuffy nose for the weekend and into today. He wasn't able to sleep much at all, and consequently, neither were we. Fortunately during the day, at least, he is happy and mostly his usual self. Motrin Infants' Drops (dye-free) are great. The Schuco hospital-grade aspirator I picked up on eBay last summer is also great, but Alex is not a big fan of it.

No new teeth. No real words. This week's task: Finish baby-proofing the first floor.

Tooth #1

Tonight while we were driving to Longmont I was stuffing a pacifier in Alex's face when my finger slipped in his mouth and brushed across a very obvious sharp edge at the front of his lower jaw. It was the top of his very first tooth! I believe it's his lower right incisor.

Again, no pics, sorry. He's been elusive, and we keep forgetting to carry the camera with us.

A Stand-Up Kind of Guy

Topping even Wednesday's big news, yesterday Alex began standing up on his own for significant lengths of time. Ryanne watched him stand up alone, twice, for about 30 seconds each time. Last night while we were getting ready for bed, he stood by the side of the bed, holding on, then letting go, then reaching back out again to hold on. When I looked down he had an enormous grin on his face and when he noticed me looking he giggled. So did I.

Sorry, still, no pictures of the elusive, North American standupapotamus. We'll keep trying.

Oh, and for the record, still no teeth, no real words.

Cruisin' Baby

Alexander William newsflash tonight! At about 7:15pm MST tonight, we observed Alex "cruising" the kitchen cabinets for the very first time! He stood up on his own near the kitchen sink, looked across the cabinets in the direction he clearly wanted to go towards the tupperware cabinet, then started making his way arm over arm on his own two feet. It only lasted about 8 seconds -- if we hadn't looked down at just that instant we would've missed it. We tried to get him to do it again with the camera ready, but once was all he had in him tonight.

I'll keep you posted as this breaking story develops.

The (end of the) Year In Review 2007

Alex tries to figure out what to do with his Christmas orange (he put it in his mouth, of course!)

What a spectacular finish to an unforgettable year! We got back from San Francisco late, late, late on Sunday night. We really lived it up on New Year's Eve, staying up all the way 'til 9:30pm or so, then sleeping in until well past 9am. It was heavenly. Even Alex humored us a bit and slept in, with only a little face pulling and happy pterodactyl screeching here and there.

This afternoon our friends Robin and Anne invited us and a couple dozen other friends up to their ridge top home for an Indian feast. Dana and I helped cook the Lima bean thing. It was delicious.

There's so much to relate about our wonderful visit to the Bay Area, but given how late it is tonight I think I may withhold some of the details until a later posting.

Pictures...

Mel always did like younger men

Alex and Alex and Dan

Kyra and Anthony wonder, "Would we ever really want one of these?"

Alex really enjoyed splashing in Bangor's (the big orange dog) water dish

Huge Christmas eve-eve dinner party with Carla, Sam, Grove, Maryo, Ali, Grandma Jane, Todd, Jessica, Gene, Bangor, Dana, Alex, Dad, Eric, Maryo and Jean