Daily Log Archive |
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A lot to be thankful for
About this time of the year I like to reflect upon all of the things
that I have to be thankful for. I suppose I could be forgiven for
looking at 2007 as a year to rapidly forget. On the contrary, despite
all of the medical issues that I have had to face up to, I truly do
have a lot to be thankful for and also have many fond memories to look
back on from the year. Among the highlights were being with my family
to watch the space shuttle Atlantis launch from the Cape back in June
and taking my nine year old daughter to her first rock concert. I took
her to see Rush (one of my long time favourite bands) and she loved it.
We also got to enjoy our new swimming pool for the first time and I
traveled a lot less than usual and as a result got to spend a lot more
time with the wife and kids. Lorna and I did some fun things too,
including a weekend break to Houston to watch the Astros play which was
a lot of fun. So all in all we had a lot of fun in 2007. When October
arrived and I was diagnosed with cancer, I will admit that I did for a
while fall into a brief pit of self pity. However, due to the amazing
support of my wife, other family members and all of my friends around
the World I was able to (for the most part) rebound and keep my spirits
up. I am truly thankful that my family doctor was on the ball and
caught the cancer at what we hope was a fairly early stage. I am also
extremely thankful that we found such a skilled surgeon to operate on
me and that the surgery went by without major incident. I am also
grateful to all of the nurses and other staff at the Seton Medical
Center in Austin for the care and professionalism they showed me during
my time as their "guest". I am also more thankful than simple words can
truly express, for all of the e-mails, other messages of support,
gifts, cards and deliveries of food that arrived (and continue to
arrive). In times of crisis you really do need your friends and you
have all been amazing. Thank you all so much. So as we head into
2008 I have regained much of my optimism and am looking forward to
whatever the year brings. I still have some unknowns in my future, but
hey, which of us doesn't? I also know that I am not alone in
having had to face up to some severe personal challenges in 2007.
Several of my very good friends have lost loved ones or had to face up
to their own medical challenges. All of you remain in my thoughts and
prayers. I pray that you each find strength and happiness in 2008.
Wherever you are reading this, I hope that 2008 is full of good
things for you.
Happy New Year!
Enjoying a few days off
As well as having some time off work to spend with the family over
the last week or so, which has been great, I have also enjoyed having a
block of days with no chemo treatments. I have had a lot of side
effects from the previous two treatments so I really need this time to
recover from those. My next round starts next week on January 2nd
so I am trying to make the most of the time between Christmas and the
New Year. On "Boxing Day" (December 26th) I spent a lot of time in
front of the TV watching the English Premier League before
I had to go see the oncologist for my "off week" checkup/iron infusion
visit. . As many of you know I am a huge Arsenal fan and
the match between Portsmouth and Arsenal was one of the many I enjoyed
watching (despite the Arsenal performance being extremely flat). Of the
matches I watched, the game of the day had to be the 4-4 draw between
Aston Villa and Chelsea. We are fortunate here in the US these days
that the Premier League gets a lot of TV coverage so I am able to keep
up really well with the matches. In fact, as I type this I am watching
Chelsea play Newcastle live on the TV and after this match is over the
Arsenal/Everton match is on so I guess I'll be glued to the TV for a
few more hours yet.
A couple of nights ago our kids had a sleep over with some of their
cousins and Lorna and I were able to go to a movie. We have not really
managed to have a "date night" since my surgery so this was a real
treat. There are currently several movies on that we would like to see
but in the end we chose National
Treasure: Book of Secrets and we both really enjoyed it
I have also been trying to get back into my reading
again. I still haven't finished any of the books that I started before
my surgery back in October. This has nothing to do with the quality of
the books, however. It's more a case of I have had trouble relaxing
enough to read and lately the chemo seems to have negatively affected
my eyesight such that my eyes get tired after just a few pages.
Thankfully I just had my annual eye exam and my new glasses should be
ready next week.
Given I still get tired pretty easily, I have had to spend a fair
bit of time stuck on the couch resting. Consequently I have finally
managed to spend quite a bit of time playing with the new Mac Book Pro
laptop. I remain really impressed with this machine. The operating
system and all of the preloaded applications seem really well done. I'm
planning to start maintaining this web site using the Mac fairly soon.
The only complaint I have is that the iWeb program that came with the
machine (as far as I can tell) can only be used to create new web sites
and not to edit/manage existing ones - so this for me is not very
useful. While talking about computers, we bought the kids a new PC for
Christmas, primarily to stop them destroying the machine in the office
here at the house (which is the only one we had previously that could
run their favourite games). The machine we got them came preloaded with
Windows Vista. Sadly, of the three games I have tried to install so
far, not one of them has worked. They all worked fine on the other
machine, which is running Windows XP. So I'll either be putting
XP on the new machine this weekend, or I'll end up giving them my home
office machine and putting the new machine in there.
As my friends outside the US may not realise, this is a big time
here in the US for collegiate football. There are seemingly endless
"bowl" games on TV between Chritmas Eve and New Years Day. This year,
our local team, the University of Texas Longhorns were in the Holiday
Bowl, played in San Diego a couple of nights ago. They were not
expected to win but in fact did win and convincingly so (52 - 34) over
Arizona State. Lorna and I enjoyed watching the game on TV. After an
average season by their standards, it was nice to see Texas end the
season in style.
Later today (if he ever wakes up!) I promised Jack we would put his
new Hotwheels track together. I'm not sure which of us is looking
forward to it more. After that I have to help Robyn download some more
music into the new iPod that she got for Christmas. In fact Lorna and
Robyn both got new iPods so I think I am going to be busy loading up
iTunes with large chunks of our CD collection over the next few days.
That's about it for now. I hope you are all enjoying the holiday
season as much as we are.
Merry Christmas!
The kids were up before the Sun at about 7:30am this morning and I
guess once again they managed to keep off the naughty list as Santa
appears to have been very good to them. The living room floor is
covered in new games, toys and debris! I must admit I really enjoyed
watching them have fun and go nuts ripping into packages this morning.
We just had breakfast and are now taking a few minutes to catch our
breath while the kids play with their loot before worrying about the
next round of activities!
To all my friends and family around the World who celebrate
Christmas I wish you a very special "Merry Christmas" and to all my
friends who celebrate other holidays I wish you likewise nothing but
good things at this festive time of the year. All of you have done so
much to support me these past few months for which I am extremely
grateful. In spite of the tough things we have endured recently I am
constantly reminded of the all the good things in the World that I need
to be so very thankful for.
From me and my family to you and yours, I wish you peace and joy.
End of round two
I finished my second (of the 12 planned) chemo rounds this week. So
far the side effects are much the same as last time but I have been a
bit more proactive with the medicines that help fight the side effects
and also got a few good suggestions from my oncologist which have
helped. So far, overall, I think I am coping a little better this time
than the first. The oncologist hopes this trend will continue. We are
trying to have as normal a Christmas as possible and the focus now is
on all of those last minute (non medical) items that go with the season
While I have a checkup visit next week I have no more chemo sessions
until January so this will help me enjoy the break a whole lot more. As
I said we have a lot to do here, so I will be brief today but wanted to
post something as many of you have been asking after me (as always
thanks for all the support and messages in the Guest
Book).
I hope wherever you are reading this you have a very safe and
enjoyable holiday season.
The new Mac, Halo 3 and me
I finally started feeling "normal" again on Sunday (December 9th),
and have been trying to get caught up on a number of things
since. Consequently, it has been a few days since my last
posting. The good news is that since Sunday I have actually been
feeling pretty good. I visited the oncologist's office on Monday for my
"off week" checkup visit and they told me all of the symptoms I am
experiencing are pretty normal for the drugs they are giving me and
that it is likely that this pattern of good days and bad days will
repeat itself as we progress through the treatment program. From my
point of view, at least knowing there will be several good days will
make it easier (I hope) from now on to adjust to the bad days. The
other good news is that my haemoglobin
level (which if you read some of my postings from October) was
dangerously low for a while, has improved significantly. This will
certainly help with my energy level and I am really happy to see it
rising.
Given it took me several days to recover from the first chemo round,
I have not had as much time or energy to play with the new Mac as I
would have liked. However, today, I met a good friend who is a Mac guru
for lunch and he was kind enough to give me a crash course in some of
the cool features and also help me setup some of the key software that
I want to run on the machine. I hope to spend more time over the next
few days exploring. My ultimate goal is to be able to use the machine
for both work and fun. Even in the short amount of time I have had to
play so far, I have been very impressed with both the machine itself
and the new Leopard operating system software that came
preloaded.
I mentioned in my previous posting that I would comment on the amazing journey the Mac took to get to me. I guess this just shows what a global economy we live in. I ordered the machine from the Apple web site which I assume is in California but have no real idea where it is. I naively assumed the machine would come from California too. However, when I got the FedEx tracking number and went to track the delivery I found the machine was being assembled and shipped from Shanghai in China. It was a lot of fun to follow the journey from then on. I managed to figure out which FedEx flights the machine was on by cunning use of flight trackers and the FedEx web page. I was able to follow the machine as it made its way to me across the Pacific. In the end, before being delivered at my front door, the machine visited the airports in Shanghai, Anchorage, Indianapolis, Memphis and Austin - quite a journey! What I found even more amazing was that the machine arrived within 25 minutes (early) of the originally scheduled delivery date and time that had been given to me when I placed the order a few days before - pretty impressive I think.
This week I have worked a full day each day so far and that has been
really nice in terms of giving me a strong feeling of normality. I also
managed to finally make time this week for my annual eye exam (which
was months overdue) and I was glad to see that my eyesight is more or
less the same as it was last year. I have been told that the chemo may
negatively affect my eyesight so I wanted to get my new glasses ordered
before the chemo has a chance to distort everything too badly (no pun
intended). While my energy is definitely continuing to come back, in
the evenings I still find I need to spend quite a lot of time taking it
easy by relaxing in front of the TV or doing other low energy things
like playing games. This week (admittedly with help from my kids) we
managed to complete level 8 of the solo player missions in Halo 3
(there are ten in total). We are now fragging our way through level
nine! Halo 3 is a very enjoyable game but also a very pleasing game in
terms of the overall graphics and production quality. Once I am done
with the single player missions I am tempted to try playing on-line but
I am also more than a bit worried that that could turn out to be a
really big consumer/waster of time - but right now maybe that's OK!!
End of round one
The chemo program I am on feels to me a lot like the way
professional boxing must feel. The two participants pummel each other
over the course of 12 rounds. Only in this case, the 12 rounds are
spread out over six months and the other guy does all the pummeling and
my job is to basically "hang in there" and wait for the bell. Today I
ended round one. I'd say we're maybe about even on points but I am
certainly dealing with a formidable opponent! I have experienced
a lot of side effects. None of them are major when taken independently
but when taken as a whole they have left me feeling pretty wiped out.
Thankfully I have until December 17th before round two gets
underway. At least, unlike professional boxing, the opponent is
pummeling me with the intention of leaving me better off at the end and
not out cold on the mat. I don't have the energy to describe the exact
regimen and how it works but I believe it is known commonly as FOLFOX.
I found a site based in the UK that seems to describe it quite well.
Here is a link
to that site. If you read the summary at that link you will see I
am getting treatment both in the oncologist's office and also at home
(via a pump that stays with me during the rounds). They remove the pump
between rounds. It will be nice to be able to sleep tonight without the
pump. I had hoped to post an update yesterday but at least for now I
have been struggling to keep up as much as I have been recently.
Hopefully I will adapt to this and do better over time.
On a happier note, I bought myself a new toy, an Apple Mac Book Pro
laptop that I hope to use to keep me occupied during some of the
upcoming chemo visits. I have never owned a Mac before so I am excited
to start exploring all of the cool features. I'll make a dedicated
posting in the next day or so to talk about the Mac and my first
impressions. I'll also describe the amazing journey the machine took to
get to me.
I continue to be grateful for all of the kind messages I continue to
receive via the Guest Book, e-mail and so
many other ways. I really appreciate and continue to need all of your
support.
A few days of normality
As I mentioned in my prior posting, last Thursday was the
Thanksgiving day holiday here in the United States. For many of us,
that meant a four day weekend. Despite the weather here in the Austin
area being really nasty (cold and wet) it was nice to have a few days
in a row where no one was pushing me, prodding me or sticking needles
into me! We went to my brother-in-law's house for a fairly large family
gathering on Thursday which was a great distraction for me and it was
also great that I was able to enjoy the wonderful meal that had been
prepared without too many worries. That said, I'm still learning which
foods my new digestive system does best with and which ones mess me up.
This will be an ongoing process for some time yet I think! On Friday we
had a gathering at our house to watch the Univerity of Texas vs Texas
A&M college football game (that's American football for my friends
outside the USA). I am also getting a bit more confident about going
out in public now so on Saturday we took the kids to see the Bee Movie
which we all enjoyed. On Sunday we went to visit my wife's mother. So
all in all I had four days of family time with lots of distractions. I
also found some time to play Halo 3 which I am rapidly becoming
addicted to.
This week I have to get back into the medical routine. Today I went
and got my flu shot so that is taken care of before chemo starts next
week. On Wednesday (tomorrow) I have to go to the hospital for my
prep visit for the small surgery I am having on Thursday to place the
port into my chest that will be used to deliver the chemo meds. It's
supposed to only be a half hour procedure and is being done as day
surgery. Chemo is due to start next week. I am also due to see my
surgeon again next week for another checkup. If he likes my progress I
should get the all clear at that point to resume a few more physical
activities (once I get my strength up some more anyway). I'm actually
going to be seeing a lot of my surgeon over the coming months as at
least for the time being he wants to monitor me at three monthly
intervals. At least the monitoring can be done in his office without
the need for all of the nasty preparations that go with a full
colonoscopy. I guess eventually I'll get into the routine of all these
appointments but right now, and I guess this means I am feeling quite a
bit better, I am about ready for a break from the seemingly endless
visits to one medical office or another! As always I'll just have to
deal with it. The mess my kids make around the house (which can be
substantial) has also started bugging me again for the first time since
before the surgery so I guess that is another sign that I am feeling a
bit better !!
Many of my neighbours have already put up their exterior Christmas
decorations and my kids are on my case to do the same. I told them that
if I feel up to it that maybe we'll make a start on that later in the
week (energy and weather permitting).
Apart from a little time off for medical appointments I am planning
to try and work pretty much a full week this week unless but I am being
careful and will take breaks as needed.
I continue to be grateful for all the messages in the Guest Book
as well as the e-mails and calls I am getting from people checking on
me. All in all, I think I am coping fairly well. I still have a long
way to go, and I am definitely a bit nervous about chemo and how I will
react to it, but for the most part I have a lot more good days than bad
ones at the moment. I'm trying to keep my attitide positive which I
manage to do for the most part but I still have my moments!
Anyway, I'll post again soon, probably after the surgery on Thursday.
Change of plans
The surgeon who is treating me called last night and we met briefly
in his office again today. As I mentioned in my posting on October 11th
, he had met with the doctor who performed the colonoscopy on me and
was calling me after having had that conversation. Unfortunately he now
feels we need to adjust from current "Plan A" to a somewhat more
radical "Plan B". Before I discuss the new plan I should perhaps
explain how we got there. The doctors believe the root cause of my
current problems is a genetic condition called Attenuated
familial adenomatous polyposis (AFAP
for short). I am not going to try, nor am I qualified to, go into a
lengthy explanation of what AFAP is. Heck, two weeks ago I had never
heard of it. In short, however, it means someone my age is likely to
have a large number (more than 20 but less than 100) of polyps in their
colon and has a much higher than normal predisposition to these
becoming cancerous in a relatively short amount of time. Today I went
and had yet more blood taken so that a genetic analysis can be
performed to prove for certain that I have AFAP (the results will be
several days coming back) but I apparently have all of the classic
indications of it and my medical team seem pretty much convinced on
this one. My bigger worry, as a parent of course, is that there
apparently is a 50% chance of this being passed on to my children.
That, however, is a bridge we do not have to cross today.
So now for the change of plans. Plan A had been to remove a large part of the colon, Plan B (I am told the recommended procedure for AFAP cases like mine) is to remove the entire colon. The logic is along the lines of if you leave part of the colon behind, because of the AFAP, in a year or so we'll be right back here again and in the meantime I'll be almost living in the doctors office getting checked for a recurrence (I'm exaggerating obviously but not that much). However, to an "average man in the street" like me, this whole new plan, at least at first, sounds horrific and I have to tell you that last evening after the surgeon called, I found myself feeling like I had taken a huge step backwards. Today, however, after meeting with the surgeon in his office and asking all kinds of questions about quality of life and future preventative care needs I think I am (slowly) coming to terms with it. If all goes according to (the new) plan, I still believe I can live a fairly normal life. I am not going to go into the gory details of what it means in terms of living without a colon but I am sure you can find a lot more information about it on the internet should you so desire!!
Surgery is still scheduled for October 26th. Suffice to
say, I am a little shaken by this change of plans but as I had more or
less adjusted to things under Plan A I am sure I will rapidly adjust to
Plan B.....
Health scare and a lesson for us all
Warning if you are squeamish about medical topics you may want to
skip this posting.
Over the latter part of the Summer I had been having trouble
sleeping, mainly because my legs were becoming so restless at night. If
you have never struggled with restless legs it's hard to describe but
it is sufficiently annoying enough that it can easily keep you awake
half the night (and for me it was doing so). I had become so restless
my wife had to find another room to sleep in for fear of being karate
kicked to death before morning!! Another symptom that I was having that
I did not realize then but do realize now to be related, was a lack of
stamina when playing sports (drastically more so say than a few months
ago). So, given all this, a few weeks back I went to see my family
doctor to ask if I could have some tablets to help me sleep and to ask
if I needed some of this new Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) medicine that
is being advertised heavily on the TV here in the US at the moment. He
did give me something to help me sleep but also took a blood sample to
check my iron levels as low iron can contribute to restlessness . For
those of us that remember our human biology from school, you will
recall that, iron helps maintain the haemoglobin level
in the blood, or put another way, haemoglobin
is the iron-containing protein attached to red blood cells that
transports oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. When my
blood tests came back
the levels were way below normal. So low in fact I was borderline for a
blood transfusion right then and there. This immediately explained the
restlessness and the lack of stamina - basically I did not have enough
oxygen in my body . So I was diagnosed as anemic but now we needed
further tests to find out why. My doctor's opinion (which proved
correct) was that I was losing blood somewhere - basically he suspected
some form of internal bleeding (maybe a stomach ulcer or a colon polyp
that was bleeding). I was referred to a Gastro Intestinal clinic. On
October 1st they performed both a colonoscopy and an
endoscopy on me
(basically they checked my colon
and my stomach for signs of trouble). My stomach was basically
clear but the news in my colon was not so good. The GI doctor found
several polyps, one of which looked "extremely suspicious" (English
translation "we think it's cancer but need a biopsy to be sure").
For the colonoscopy I was heavily sedated and it was many hours
before I really came around enough to comprehend that even at my
relatively young age (42) and with my very active lifestyle and high
fibre diet it was still likely that I had colon cancer. When this
all sank in I was a mess. I don't recall a day in my life when a single
piece of news has hit me quite so personally and quite so hard. I did
not find myself thinking so much of my own future but much more so of
my young kids (5 and 9) and my wife. Thankfully the doctor sent
over a prescription for something to help me relax that night and the
next morning we began the process of more tests and preparing to fight
back. On October 2nd I went and had a CT scan and had my
blood cross
typed in case I did end up needing a blood transfusion (given I still
was very anemic). On October 3rd (Wednesday) we started to
get the
results back. The bad news was that the biopsy has confirmed that I do
have cancer in my cecum
(bottom of the ascending colon if you again remember your human
biology). The
better news was that the CT scan and additional blood work had found no
evidence of spreading and that we believe (I am a pessimist and always
have trouble with good news) that the cancer is localized to the colon.
Yesterday (October 9th) I met with a colo-rectal surgeon
to discuss my options. Based on the collected test results, he has
developed a surgery plan for me which will require quite a large part
of my colon to be removed but if all goes well will enable me to eat
and perform other digestive system related activities pretty much
normally after that. The surgery is planned for October 26th.
I'll post details about the hospital and other relevant information
closer to that date. After the surgery they will again test the various
parts of tissue and lymph nodes that get removed during surgery and we
will know much more about what this cancer has been up to. At that
point
I will meet with an oncologist to see if I need chemotherapy or not and
I will likely also get a PET scan. I am encouraged by the fact that the
medical team is comfortable waiting a few days to schedule this surgery
on a non-panic basis but I'd still rather have this over with. If an
earlier date opens up on the surgeon's schedule I will most likely take
it for no other reason than to reduce the wait time.
That then...minus a few of the nastier details, is pretty much the
full update. The lesson for us
all
in this (especially us stubborn men) is go see your doctor even for
little things that are bugging you. If I had ignored this we would not
have caught it as soon as we hope we have. I am also very grateful to
my family doctor who did not just give me meds to help me sleep but was
thorough and did that blood test that helped me get a proper diagnosis.
I know that doctors get a lot of pressure to prescribe certain
medications from the reps selling them. Any drug reps out there reading
this please take note - treating the symptom does not always equal
finding the cure.
I know several of you have already found out about this from the
blogoshpere and other contacts and I truly appreciate all of the
prayers, thoughts, e-mails ands other messages my family and I have
received at this time. To be honest I am still in shock but slowly
getting my energy back to prepare me for my road to recovery. I'm
hoping it's not too long a road but there remain so many unknowns only
time will really tell. Please do keep sending me those e-mails they
really help - sometimes even surrounded by family and friends one can
feel very alone at a time like this and knowing that you are all out
there cheering me on is giving me amazing strength. It's also somewhat
surreal, to have been following the courageous fight of Robert Jordan
(see my prior posting) against a truly evil disease to now find myself
in the middle of my own fight.
Finally, as several people have asked about it, I have turned on the
Guest Book at this web site. Please do
feel free to leave us a message if you are soon inclined.
My wife Lorna has been a rock by my side through this. It all came out of the blue and we have shared a fair amount of tears together but we are feeling stronger now and ready to start out on the road towards getting me cured. My kids are doing OK but not great. Jack (he's 5) is actually fine. We told him daddy will get better and due to his nature he just accepted that and keeps on trucking. He is however mad at me that the doctor won't let him have my colon in a jar for show and tell at school (go figure!). My daughter, Robyn (she is 9) has taken this hard. She is blessed with about 500% of the empathy found in an average person. This can be both a blessing and a curse. She has figured everything out very quickly and she is hurting. We are taking steps to make sure she gets what she needs to get through this too.
I will keep responding to e-mails as quickly as I can but I will
also post a message here whenever there is any news to share.
I have always felt one of my greatest gifts in life is having so many wonderful friends and family around the World. Thanks for sticking with me through this.I need you all.
Kelvin
Robert Jordan
I read
with great sadness today, that James Oliver Rigney, Jr. (known to
most of us by his pen name of Robert Jordan),
author of the extremely popular Wheel of Time
series of books has died. He had been fighting illness for some time
and I had been following his blog and always hoping for good news.
Sadly today the news is that he has lost his battle.
His books
have kept me company on many a long plane ride and I have met many
others while traveling who were also carrying copies of his books.
My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
I'm still way behind
Despite my best intentions, I am still way behind in my postings
here. I am managing to keep several of the other sections up to date
and I really am hoping to get back to a regimen of regular postings
here soon. We have crammed a lot of interesting activities into
the Summer break but I have to confess that now that the kids are both
back at school things do feel a little calmer around here and hopefully
that will let me get back to my long planned web site overhaul.
However, with both kids now playing soccer (both insisted they would
only play if I helped coach), a lot of my free time after work and at
the weekends is taken up with that. We have practices three nights a
week and games every Saturday and even a few on Sunday! For those
interested in my work activities, I have been making some (fairly
regular) postings to my work blog.
One of the things I have managed to do over the Summer is make more
time for reading
which has been particularly nice.
While on the subject of travel, last week I had to go to Chicago for the day to attend some meetings. It was amazing to see the difference that a few hundred miles makes to weather conditions (Chicago is just under 1000 miles from here). I left Austin at 6:00am on a beautiful clear sunny day (the high that day was in the high 70's F). When we landed in Chicago it was a scene from mid-Winter. Frozen lakes, snow, planes being de-iced and a high temperature of 29 degrees Fahrenheit. This was a good reminder of why I live as far south as I do! I got back to Austin around 11pm the same day – tired but happy to be back in warmer climes!
The other reason that I have been posting a bit less here than usual is that I have started working on a prototype for a completely re-designed look for this site. My goal is to switch over to that later in the year (yes it's time for the pink to go!).
We have had drought conditions for a long time now as well as some fairly warm temperatures. In fact it's been sufficiently warm that the temperature of the water in the pool has been hovering around 70 degrees (Fahrenheit) for the last few weeks without needing to use the heater. I think I was the first one in the pool in mid February aided by the fact that I have a very high tolerance for cold water. I think this is due to growing up in England where the English Channel was often this cold even in the midst of Summer! Both kids have also now been swimming several times now, but Lorna has yet to “take the plunge” !
This weekend in the US, we switched over to Daylight Savings Time. This is considerably earlier than usual due to a change in the law that came into effect this year. I spent most of Sunday morning making sure that all of the computers and other electronic devices in the house had realized the time has changed. For the next few weeks we find ourselves only 5 hours behind the UK which will make working with my colleagues there just a little bit easier. Of course getting the kids out of bed while it is still dark outside is not so easy (that's the downside of starting DST so early!).
In the sporting world, this week sees the start of the Cricket World Cup. I'm keeping my expectations extremely low for England's chances but of course I wish the team all the best as they head into this two month long event. Hopefully the successes they enjoyed towards the end of the recent tour of Australia will give them some momentum going into this competition. As with the football World Cup, one of the interesting dynamics is that as well as the big name cricketing nations you also get some other countries playing in the event that are not known for their cricketing prowess. It will be interesting to see if we get any surprises. What odds for a Scotland vs Holland final I wonder ? :-)
This week the kids are off school for Spring Break so, naturally, drought notwithstanding, it's pouring with rain and supposed to be wet until at least Wednesday.
Anyway, that's the update for now. I will try and get into a more regular pattern of posting over the next few months.
Wherever you are reading this I hope that your year is off to a good start. I took a large part of December off to recharge the batteries after a very busy 2006. Consequently I have not posted here at all since early December. The new year for me is already off to a busy start but at least I feel somewhat rested and ready to go. Over the holiday period in the Austin area we had a mix of warm,cold and wet weather. The new year has started in much the same way. It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit here last Friday but since then it has become quite cold. Today we awoke to temperatures in the low 20's Fahrenheit with a mix of ice, freezing rain, sleet and snow. A few minutes ago we had about 30 minutes of snow but not enough for the kids to have a good snowball fight. Around here the kids don't see snow very ofter so as soon as it starts they all run outdoors . I think the last time we had any snow that settled was in 2004 and even then it only stayed on the ground for a few hours. The weather forecast I just listened to says we could see a few inches of snow before the week is over. All of the area schools are closed and most businesses are shut and I just looked at the airport website and am really glad I am not trying to fly anywhere today. This is definitely a day for not going anywhere if you can avoid it. Those who live in colder climes would be taking a day like this in their stride but this far South the place basically grinds to a halt when we get a rare day of real Winter. So while many people are enjoying an "ice day" off work - yours truly is at his desk working away as usual. I work from home a lot but one of the few downsides is that when we have a really bad weather day I can't say "sorry I can't look at that today as the office is closed". That said we have started having some power and gas outages and that could certainly slow me down a bit.
I'd like to express my best wishes to all my many friends and
colleagues around the World for a safe and prosperous 2007. I hope I'll
get to meet many of you during my travels in the coming months.
Here we go again...that crazy Texas weather!
Yesterday evening before we went to bed it was in the low 70's Fahrenheit and during the day the temperature had been up as high as 80 degrees. Overnight a very strong cold front came in and we awoke to find ice on the windows and temperatures down in the 20's. I have written here many times about the crazy Texas weather but you never quite get used to it. Yesterday we sent the kids to school in shorts and t-shirts and today we sent them off in heavy coats and sweaters! Along with cold front last night we had an interesting selection of severe weather alerts (hail, wind, thunder storms, tornadoes) that kept the program on my PC that monitors the weather chirping out warnings all night.
I have been maintaining my effort to keep up with my reading. This month I read Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon (all 1100 plus pages of it) which I enjoyed a lot. I also read The Partner by John Grisham which I also thoroughly enjoyed. I am now reading Deception Point by Dan Brown and Hyperion by Dan Simmons. When it comes to books, one of my bad habits is that I tend to buy them in batches and then go back and read them. The net result of this is that some books have sat on my bokshelves for a very long time before I get around to reading them. Hyperion is a prime example, as I bought it while still living in tyhe UK back in 1990 and I am only now getting around to reading it in November 2006!
Last week the kids were sick and this week I have been very much under the weather as well but other than that things at home are going well. The pool project is coming along quite nicely (I'll try and upload some photos soon) and what looked like a large muddy hole in the ground a few weeks ago is now starting to look a lot more like a swimming pool as each day passes. If the weather cooperates, I am hoping it might be finished and ready for water in about two or three weeks.
I would be remiss in posting this update if I did not comment on the Ashes series that has just got underway in Australia. If any of my Australian friends and colleagues are reading this, what can I say, it looks like revenge may well be yours unless things change drastically after England's less than stellar performance in the first test!! That said, back in 2005, I recall feeling like this after Australia easily won the first test at Lords so maybe history can and will repeat itself - we'll have to wait and see. Either way, I hope it's another great series and as much fun to watch as the 2005 one was. Keeping up with the matches is hard from here in the U.S. The coverage starts at around 6pm in the evening here (which is not too bad considering that equates to midnight for those following the matches in the U.K.) but almost all of the regular internet feeds are blacked out due to licensing restrictions. The second test starts this evening (Friday morning for those in Australia) and I'll be doing my best to follow along and hopefully will not be made to suffer as much as I was a few days ago listening to Australia make record scores at the Gabba.
Miscellaneous notes from a busy week
Most weeks are busy these days between work and family commitments and this week was no exception. Several days I stayed up late (and into the next day) to dial into some business meetings in Asia (but that was better than having to travel there given how crazy things have been at home).
In spite of how busy life has been, I have made a promise to myself that I will somehow find more time to read than I have been managing of late. This week I managed to read a couple of fairly short books. The first was Digital Fortress by Dan Brown and the second was the Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. I enjoyed both and found it easy to get through them but neither were in my opinion that great. If you look at my Books and Magazines page you will see that I gave each book a score of 7 out of 10. Digital Fortress is the third of the four Dan Brown books currently in print that I have read. The other two being Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code. Of the three I enjoyed Angels and Demons the most. His other book Deception Point is in my queue of books sitting next to my desk waiting to be read. The Great Train Robbery is one of Crichton's first books (written I think in 1974). To be honest I didn't know it even existed until I saw it in a discount rack at the local supermarket a couple of weeks ago. Given my background (being born and raised myself in the UK) I picked up a copy as it looked like a storyline that I would enjoy. To be honest, it reads as much as a history book as it does a novel but it was none the less quite readable. I enjoyed his portrayal of events in Victorian England around the middle of the 19th Century and found it easy to relate to the period having studied it in detail while at school. The book was enjoyable enough but not as compelling a read as some of his other works. I guess, for me, it was a bit like watching the movie "Titanic", you already know the punchline before you get there, which for me, has never worked as well as a style of storytelling as one where suspense is maintained until the final chapter.
Other than being busy and finding time for a bit more reading, there has not been too much of note to report this week (which is just fine). We had quite a bit of rain during the week and so there has not been any progress made on the pool. The weather has been the usual mixed bag for this time of the year. A cool front (the tail end of a storm that left 18 inches of snow in Colorado earlier in the week) finally came in last night and we haven't yet quite managed to reach 70 Fahrenheit here today. It's also been quite windy here all day. The forecast is good for the weekend so hopefully I can spend a lot of time outdoors with the family and the dogs.
Finally, the dreaded annual test of willpower (also known as "how the heck am I going to stop myself eating too much Halloween candy?") is just a few days away. Luckily I have a soccer game on Sunday to try and run off a few calories first!
Kakuro puzzles, the new pool and other miscellany
Towards the end of last year I got quite hooked on Sudoku puzzles for a while. They can be quite addictive. I ended up writing a small computer program in Java that solved them and that helped cure me of that particular addiction! Recently while checking out at my local grocery store I spotted (and bought) a new book of Kakuro (also known as Cross Sum) puzzles. Although I believe that these puzzles are quite popular I had not come across them before. In my spare time I have been trying to teach myself the Python programming language and so last weekend I decided to write a Python program to help solve Kakuro puzzles! I decided not to let the program fully solve the puzzles but to be more of a solver's aid (listing possible combinations of numbers that achieve the desired sum etc.). So for now the Kakuro puzzle book is remaining a fairly regular companion!
Life at home has been very busy (I think we've visited just about every flavour of kids doctor and dentist in the last two weeks!) and so I haven't been able to update the pages here too much lately. You may have noticed that I have been trying to keep up with my reading and I just finished World War: In the balance by Harry Turtledove which was a good read. I'm grateful to my friend Roger for introducing me to this author, whose work I had not read before.
Meanwhile, we finally broke down, after living here for 10 years, and decided to put in a pool. Today I am working from home with all the windows shut (despite the nice cool weather) as the guys are outside spraying the gunite. There is so much vibration that my car alarm goes off about once every 10 minutes! Yesterday it was almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit here but today (after a cold front came through last night) we are in the 50's....I don't think we'll be using the new pool for a while!
Google Gadgets for web pages
I was interested to see the announcement by Google yesterday that they
are making their Google Gadgets available so that people can embed them
(via a simple script tag) in their own web pages.
This is particularly interesting for people like myself, whose web sites
are hosted by their ISP with limited space and features enabled (as in my
case).If you missed the announcement you can find
it here.
The list of available gadgets is here.
You should see a clock gadget below.
Has Autumn finally arrived in Central Texas?
We awoke this morning to temparatures in the 50's Fahrenheit. It's wonderful to be able to open all the windows again and let in some truly fresh air. This Summer we have endured in excess of 30 days where the temparature was over 100F. It's supposed to warm up into the high 70's or even mid 80's by mid afternoon but at least the evenings and mornings should be cooler for the next few days. We had a very strong storm front go through this area on Saturday (it was severe enough to cause the Univerity of Texas to suspend play in it's football game for over an hour). Now that the storm has passed through we are getting our first real relief from what has been a very hot Summer.
A long week on the road and now two weeks off
Last week I travelled to Baltimore to speak at the SHARE conference. I left home before dawn on Sunday (August 13th) to get to the airport in plenty of time given the new security procedures in effect. Apart from it taking longer than usual to check-in (due to a lot more passengers than normal checking bags) I did not encounter any other unexpected delays. Given the recent events in the UK, I was happy to see that the planes were full and that the airports were busy - people are just getting on with life, which is good to see. I arrived in Baltimore on Sunday afternoon and left on Thursday afternoon for New York to attend some business meetings at our corporate headquarters before finally flying home from New York (via Chicago) on Friday evening. I did not have as much spare time in Baltimore as I would have liked but I did at least get to walk around the harbour and take some photographs. It was hot and at times quite humid during the week. I didn't sleep well at all in Baltimore. I think my hotel must have been either close to a fire station or a police station as all night I kept getting woken up by one siren after another. From Baltimore I travelled to New York for some meetings on Friday (I actually got off in Stamford CT as it was more convenient for my friend who met me at the station). I travelled by train for the first time in a while in the US as it was both cheaper and more convenient than flying for that particular leg of my trip. I have to say it was a very pleasant experience. I took the new Acela Express service that Amtrak runs between Washington DC and Boston. I would definitely take this train again. It was very comfortable, with plenty of space to work and even had AC power that I could plug my laptop into. I got the impression that a lot of people were taking the train for the first time to avoid the travel delays being reported by many of the airports in the North Eastern United States. The train was full. I stayed with my friends and his family in Connecticut on Thursday night and I slept really well (no sirens - or any other loud noises for that matter). It was great to not have to check-in to yet another hotel and spend the night with some good friends that I don't see as often as I would like. I'm very grateful to them for putting me up for the night.
I got home about 1:30am Saturday morning after getting delayed in both New York and Chicago by a mixture of bad weather and an Instrument Landing System (ILS) failure on one of the runways at Chicago O'Hare airport. The weather in New York was bright and sunny but we could not leave on time due to the problems at O'Hare.
I haven't taken much vacation time yet this year so I am taking the next two weeks off (I'm not going back to work in fact until after the Labor day holiday here in the US). We're in the middle of a really bad drought in Central Texas. I wish some of the heavy rain I had to deal with in Chicago last Friday would find its way here. We have been over 100 degrees Farenheit every day for the past week or so. I played soccer on Sunday afternoon (August 20th). It was 97F when the game started and 103F by the end of the game (yes I know, mad dogs and Englishmen etc). My daughter went back to School last week. I still have trouble getting used to how early the schools go back in Texas compared to what I was used to growing up in England where August is considered the height of Summer.
Started working on updates to Family & Friends section
For those of you that follow the Family & Friends section, after a long delay of about seven months, I have started getting some more recent photos of the kids posted.
Started working on various updates
Enjoying a period of almost two weeks since I last had to travel, I have finally started making updates to many sections of the site. I still have a lot more photos from my recent trip to Europe that I want to get on-line as soon as possible, but if you care to look around hopefully you will notice a lot of updates. For folks that monitor the Family & Friends area I promise I will get some new kid photos uploaded soon!
Finally home after a very busy June
June was a very busy month for me. I travelled to Europe for 15 days of business meetings that took me to Prague, Vienna and various parts of the UK. I did manage to see a lot of friends and family members in between meetings and that was great. I will try over the next week or two to update the various parts of this site with some photos and other information about my recent travels. Upon my return from Europe I had to go out to California for a couple of days so I'll not start working on the updates until my head gets a bit more back into the correct timezone!
As a temporary measure, I have placed a few photos from Prague into my Yahoo! photo album. Note that the resolution of the pictures is greatly reduced from the original by the upload process but at least (hopefully) you can get an idea of what a beautiful city Prague is.
A really stormy Spring in Texas
I have been incredibly busy at work (including quite a bit of travel) and things at home have also been busy and as a result I have not been able to post as often as I would like here in recent weeks. I have, however, managed to find a little bit of time to update other sections of the site. As has been reported in the news, May has so far been incredibly stormy in Texas. We have had numerous Thunderstorm Warnings and Tornado Watches issued by the Weather Service and sadly some areas of the state have suffered major damage as a result. We have also seen a lot of hail and very heavy rain. Mixed in with this it has been very hot. Just south of Austin, it hit 106F yesterday. Today it was cooler when we woke up as a light cold front moved through the area over night. Certainly a pleasant break from the recent very muggy conditions. The next few days are supposed to be more pleasant both in terms of temparature and calmer weather.
A day at the Johnson Space Center - Houston
As I mentioned in my prior posting, a couple of weekends ago I finally was able to make the time to visit the Johnson Space Center in Houston. We took one of the tours that included a visit to one of the two former Mission Control rooms that were used during the Apollo program. It is fascinating to think that the total computing power in the room was about the same as that found in a modern day cell phone (at least that is what the tour guide told us). Note also the plastic tubes on the left side of the console. There was no e-mail in those days so if you wanted to send a message to someone else anywhere in the building you sent a note on paper in a tube to them through a system of pipes like those used today in many banks and other businesses! We have come a long way since then but I bet the didn't have the spam problem then that we have now! As I mentioned in my prior posting, if you are at all interested in the space program's of both the US and Russia, this tour is a must. There is another tour that takes you into the current mission control room but we did not have the time to do that tour as well. We also got to go inside many of the other buildings, including the one that contains the training areas for the Space Shuttle and for Space Station Freedom. You will find some more of the pictures that I took in my Yahoo! photo album.
Spring has sprung - in Texas
Things have been so busy that I have not posted to the homepage here in almost a month (although I have been keeping many of the other sections of the site up to date during that time). I spent last week in Seattle where it is still very much Winter, in fact it was snowing the night before I flew home. Here in Texas this week the kids are on Spring Break and Spring has definitely arrived. We have have had almost no Winter this year and last Friday the high temparature was 90 degrees Farenheit where we live. This week it's a little cooler but still very mild. Many of the trees in our garden (mostly the Red Buds) have already bloomed. Over the weekend we drove to Houston to tour the Johnson Space Center and to visit the really excellent visitors center called Space Center Houston (a fabulous day out by the way) and along the way we saw many Texas Blue Bonnets along the side of State Road 71. I'll try and get a few of the photos I took at the Space Center posted here over the next few weeks.
Crazy Texas weather - again!
As you will know if you have explored this site at all, I have lived in the Austin (Texas) area for a little over 10 years now. Despite that, the frequent and often dramatic shifts in weather here never cease to amaze me. Yesterday afternoon it was 81 degrees Farenheit and I was wearing shorts and playing with the kids outside. Overnight a cold front blew in and today (at 11:00) it is 39 degrees Farenheit and it has just started to rain and apparently ice storms are a possibility for the weekend. If you've ever had the pleasure of driving through or even flying through this area on an "ice day" you'll know just how much fun that can be! My friends and colleagues in the North East of the USA probably wonder why I am complaining given they are burried under snow at the moment but even so, a more than 40 degrees temparature swing in under 12 hours is amazing! The Freescale Marathon is being run here in Austin on Sunday and sadly this weather looks like making that a tough run for those involved. I am supposed to be playing soccer on Sunday afternoon and that should be fun too. Forecast highs for Sunday are in the low 30's. Despite growing up in the UK I haved most recently lived in predominantly warm areas and it's always a shock to the system when this kind of weather literally blows in. Looks like being a weekend for movies, video games and reading!
A busy start to a busy year
As I suspected, 2006 has indeed got off to a busy start. I have already had to travel on business three times (all within the Continental USA) and we are not yet out of January. So far I have found myself in Raleigh, Las Vegas,and San Jose. I had not been to Las Vegas for a few years but it did not seem to have changed very much. I think the airport however, may make it onto my unofficial list of the "top 10 airports I least like to fly through"! Arriving is not too bad but departing is a different story. I arrived at the airport at around 5am (maybe even a little before that) for a 7am flight. I guess to an extent I was a bit naiive and expected the airport to be somewhat quiet at this early hour (I guess I have become spoiled getting used to calm early departures out of Austin). Far from being quiet, the place reminded me of LAX at four in the afternoon (LAX would also make my list). The teminal was mobbed. Long lines were everywhere, at check in, security, even for the train to the gates. In fact, even the automatic ticket kisok machines had long lines in front of them. Mental note to self, Las Vegas never sleeps and this includes the airport! The one saving grace was that there is a separate frequent flyer line for the security checkpoint. It appeared that 90% of the people leaving Vegas at that morning either were not frequent flyers or did not realize that there was such a line available. I estimate that this saved me more than 30 minutes if not more. The other saving grace was that after finally navigating all of the lines, squeezing into the train and walking through the "last chance to win" gauntlet of slot machines that I found myself right in front of a Starbucks! Oh well, enough of my complaining, 2006 is indeed off to a very busy start.
Another busy year ahead
So the holidays are over and 2006 is here. One of my resolutions for the new year is to spend a bit more time on this web site. We'll see how well I actually manage to do that as the year progresses. As I look at my calendar for 2006 it is already filled with both personal and business commitments. Looks like being another hectic year. First day back after the break I found myself on a plane at 6:50am to attend some business meetings in North Carolina. This week I seem to have managed to catch a really nasty cold or the flu. So between work, kids and feeling under the weather, I'm already in need of another holiday and I have only been back at work for a week and a half! I hope that your year is perhaps off to a calmer start.
A time to reflect
At this time of year it is important for me to stop and reflect on all of the many things that I am thankful for. I am blessed in that I have many of them. Most of all I have a wonderful wife, two fantastic kids and a great extended family. I also am extremely fortunate to have such a large collection of friends and work colleagues all over the World. To all of you, here's wishing for a safe and merry Christmas/Holiday season and a very happy and successful 2006.
I can't believe it's already December
Where has the year gone? Time just seems to be flying by. We put up the Christmas lights outside the house last weekend. Indeed our entire street is now looking very festive. The last few weeks both work and family life have been extremely hectic so I have not been posting here as often as normal. We had a restful Thanksgiving break and the weather here in central Texas has been great recently. Clear skies, highs in the 60's Farenheit and overnight lows in the 40's and 50's (once or twice even into the 30's) over the past couple of weeks. It's supposed to be warmer again over the weekend. I have a soccer tourament to play in on Sunday and the forecast looks great for that. A friend in the UK sent me the official set of 3 DVDs containing all the highlights of the Ashes series from this Summer. I am hoping to make some time to watch those soon. Another good friend who just visited the UK brought me back the "Botham's Ashes" DVD which has all the highlights of the 1981 Headingly test on it. I did force myself to find time to watch that and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was great to relieve those few days again. I remember being home from school part of that day (but not why) and watching Botham's epic knock on TV live. Taling of how time flies, I cannot believe that that was 24 years ago now.
RSS Feed now tested and live
I finally added RSS support to this web page. For those of you that like using RSS readers or live bookmarks (in Firefox) the RSS feed is now available. For the time being the RSS feed is just for the main page.
I'm ready for a rest
I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. Work has been busy, the kids have been sick, I had to have surgery (nothing major but surgery is never fun) and my wife has been looking after us all. Suffice to say, we're all hoping to get a few days rest at the end of next week during the Thanksgiving holiday (long) weekend here. In the meantime some cooler weather finally arrived here in Texas. As recently as a week ago, we were still in the 80's Farenheit but then a cold front arrived and finally we have some sweater weather for the first time since last Winter. The daytime highs have been in the 50's and 60's and at night it's been getting down into the 30's. The cooler weather is supposed to stay with us until at least the middle of next week.
Colorado Software Summit 2005
I spent last week in Keystone (Colorado) at the Colorado Software Summit. I have put few photos into the Travel journal and also into the Yahoo! photo album. For those interested, I put some technical details into the dW Blog and I also added a few details to the Conferences section.
The mountains rise in the distance above Keystone Village
Maps:Several people who are not familiar with the Texas geography have asked me how close Austin is to where the storm is supposed to make landfall. You can get a Google map showing the area if you click here.
Of course, all this talk of sports events, does not in any way imply that we are not trying to do all we can to help those left greatly in need by Katrina. Earlier today, my wife and the girl scout troop she helps run, went up and down our street collecting food donations for the folks being sheltered here in Austin. I'm happy to report that our big SUV is jam packed with supplies (we had to fold all the seats flat) and we'll be taking this to the drop off point soon. As far as I can tell the people here in Austin and all over Texas have really stepped up and its great to see.
| I spent all of last week in Boston on business. It was a very busy week and as a consequence I haven't posted much here of late. It was nice to experience the cooler temperatures (80's by day and 50's overnight). I did not have a lot of free time in Boston but I did get a few nice sunset photos of the city and the harbor. The photo on the right, shows the USS Constitution in its Boston Harbor dock right before sunset last Thursday. The ship, also know as "Old Ironsides" is still an active vessel of the US Navy, in fact it was due to go out into the harbor for a two hour voyage the following day. You can read more about the ship here. I got back to Texas last Friday afternoon and it was 102F. Summer may be officially over and the kids are back at school, the local baseball team just played its last regular season triple-A game, but the weather right now is as hot as it has been all year. As I have been all Summer, I was up early again on Saturday and Sunday to listen to the 4th Cricket test between England and Australia from Trent Bridge. Has there ever been a more exciting series than this? England seem to be on top right now, but as I have said in prior posts, whoever wins this series, the ultimate winner is the game of cricket itself. A friend of mine over in the UK taped the third test highlights and sent them to me. That has to be one of the most exciting drawn tests ever. Today I have been working with one eye on the TV as Hurricane Katrina came onshore. It remains to be seen exactly how bad the damage and loss of life will be. Thoughts and prayers go out to all of those involved. |
USS Constitution, August 25th 2005
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