February 27, 2005

Little Porter is doing somewhat better this week than last. His kidneys are starting to perform thier proper function, his brain hemorage is heaing, and the blood is draining from around his brain. Today at dinner Kevin pointed out that only one nurse was tending to him now -- not four like previous days. The ward fasted for Porter this week. I've had many people inquire after him, and Kevin & Elise. Our ward has been very kind.

We had ward conference today. The stake presidency spoke, Rick gave a very nice talk (as usual). To be honest, the most noteable part of the day was sitting in Sunday school with Erin. We haven't done that for well over two years. One of Erin or I are out with one of the kids (or teaching primary). Matthew stayed in nursery by himself -- remarkable! He got a little homesick near the end, but genrally speaking he did pretty well. Hopefully this becomes a trend.

We went over to the Freibergs place tonight to celebrate Sommer's seventh birthday. I can't belive she is seven years old. I remember very clearly the night she was born. Erin was over at her folks place, and I was studying for an accounting exam that I thought for sure I was going to fail (but didn't). Sean, Rick and I had a nice Sunday evening discussion while the girls watched the Academy Awards.

February 20, 2005

I'm really sad today -- to be honest, I can't remember the last time I've felt this way. My heart is aching for Kevin and Elise, and little Porter.

On Tuesday of this week (Feb 15), Elise was admited to the hospital after her water broke in the middle of the night. The next day she delivered Porter Bryce Wolff, roughly two months early. The baby weighed just over 3 pounds. Initially everything looked well (given the situation), but sometime Wednesday evening the baby was transfered to the neonatal intensive care unit, and his health got steadily worse.

We were initially told he contracted pneumonia as a result of being born with strep, and that he wasn't producing enough white blood cells to beat the illness on his own. As is the case with many pre-mature babies, he also wasn't breathing on his own. Over the past few days he's had all sorts of trouble. His kidneys aren't working properly and he's having siezures regularly. Despite all this (and with the aid of life-support) he's hanging on to life even now.

Elise and Kevin are really hurting -- there have been alot of "lows" over the past few days. Our family has shed many tears over this situation, and we've prayed alot. Kevin and Elise are wrestling with the decision to instruct the doctor to remove the life support systems. We were with them over at mom and dad's house this evening, and talked about the decision with them. Kevin says that he feels some measure of peace when he thinks about discontinuing life support, but the very thought of it is extremely difficult. Erin and I can only imagine.

Erin and I went to the temple on Saturday with the ward. I had a hard time concentrating. We read "The Peacegiver" in the car on the way there and back. I was touched by the authors description of the several facest of the atonement of Christ -- very touched. It's quite hard to put into words, but I learned (among many other things) somewhat of how the atonement heals heartache and pain, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about this, especially in light of Kevin and Elise.

I'm sure Kevin and Elise have fasted and prayed as earnestly and sincerely about this situation as anything they've ever fasted and prayed about in thier whole lives. Kevin told me this evening that he feels no strong revelation over what to do. Grandpa Melchin once taught us that when the Lord doesn't reveal to us what we should do, perhaps we should be asking what we should learn from bearing the burden. What are Kevin and Elise to learn from this? What am I to learn from this? I'm not entirely sure, but I have certainly seen remarkable growth in Kevin over the past few days. He is growing in a way that comes only those who suffer this type of heartache. Tonight he said that he's learned what's important in life and what's not. By observation, I've learned this too.

I wish I had happier things to write about tonight. I wish that Kevin and Elise were doing thier normal Sunday evening family visit routine. I sincerly hope that we all can be changed for the good because of this.

More than once, while feeling sad, I've had the thought that there are worse things that are happening around the world today -- more hurtfull, more painfull things even than a very sick infant. After reading The Peacegiver I am reminded that Christ not only suffered the pain of sins of the world, and also for all of the pain caused to others because of these sins -- but He also suffered all the heartache of mortality -- and becasue of this suffering, He, and He alone, has power to heal our hearts no matter what mortal pain we suffer.

May He heal Kevin and Elise's heartache.

February 9, 2005

Yesterday was Erin's 29th birthday. Everyone in the house has been sick, so we didn't do much to celebrate. (Erin took Matt's temperature before putting him to bed last night -- 104 degrees.) Gracie was very concerned that we didn't open any gifts or have any cake -- she's at the age where birthdays = parties with lots of kids.

Grace has figured out how to lock and unlock all the interior doors in the house. Evertime I go into a room, I'm stopped by a locked door. She's very excited when I ask her to come unlock the door. To be honest, it's starting to drive me crazy. She's so cute though.

We've been looking pretty seriously at a minivan recently. Since August we've had only one car, and it's been very tough. We'll be going to Salt Lake for general conference in April, and we'll be driving, so we have to have a minivan by then. I never really know wheather it's better to lease or buy -- so far I'm kind of looking a buying a used Honda Odysey or Toyota Sienna. But leasing a new vehicle definatly has its benefits also.

Last weekend (February 4-5) I went on a bit of a skiing "get-away" with Sean, Jeff Shipley and Dustin Thompson. One of Sean's patients kindly offered Sean his ranch home just outside of Radium. The place was fantastic. We skiied Kicking Horse the first day and Lake Louise the second day. The snow was pretty good both days, but the visibility at Kicking Horse was definatly poor. That said, Kicking Horse had great terrain and deep snow. It was fun to get to know Dustin and Jeff a little bit better.

February 1, 2005

We had a very warm weekend -- something like 12 degrees. That's quite warm for the end of January.

Erin and I stayed in on Friday evening. We played with the web camera, Melinda and Micheal were on the other end. I couldn't make my computer microphone work, so M&M couldn't hear us, but we could hear them. Rick and Cathy stoped by to drop off one of Rick's broken work computers for me to look at. Cathy was amazed at the web camera.

Saturday afternoon we looked a mini-van's. They're so expensive. I'd really like Erin to have one -- it's been very tough to share a car these last few months. I hope we can get everthing in order to get a van for Erin. Gracie and Matt sayed with Rick and Cathy while we looked at vans. When we returned to pick up the kids, Gracie was quite teary. In the car on the way home she complained of a hurting ear, then of a hurting cheek, then hurting nose. She cried a very painfull, confused cry that only young children can cry when they're hurt and they don't understand why. It was so sad.

Saturday evening we went to the Gedlaman's place to celebrate Mike's thirty-ninth birthday. The same group of people were there as have been there for the past three years: Brad and Shelly Harker, Larry and Liana Kearl, Derek and Julie Kearl and Erin and I. I really enjoy Mike's birthday parties -- one of the few social outings I actually look forward to. Mike always prepares a very high end cut of beef, and Serena makes a tasty desert.

Sunday was a sick day -- for me included. None of us went to church. I got up and went to my early meetings then came home and had a nap. I woke up in time to go to Jesse Potrie's missionary farewell in the Rockyview ward. He gave an excellent report to the high council and a very good talk in sacrament meeting. Jesse is a young man who has been very well prepared.

A Personal Productivity Toolkit

I've been wanting to increase my work productivity time recently. While wasting time today, I came across this article, and immediately got back to work.

January 25, 2005

Quite a bit has happend since my last post. Most noteably, I've been to Toronto to meet my new work coleagues and Gracie celebrated her 4th birthday.

Gracie's party was quite fun. She invited 16 of her closest friends -- it was a hectic gathering to say the least. 16 four and five year-old's in the same room for an hour and a half proves quite tiring. I have to admit... I had a lot of fun though.

Gracie is becoming such a little girl. She is maturing, and quite fun to be around. I took her ice skating the other night -- she had so much fun! Lately she's discovered how to lock and unlock the bedroom/bathroom doors. Every door in the house is locked.

I've been very disturbed with the images I've seen in the news and conjured in my mind of all the loss and personal suffering undergone by the survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami. I've come near to tears on a couple of occasions when I think of all the four year old girls who are now withought parents. I find myself hugging Gracie and telling her how much I love her many times a day.

Shane Lethaby and Scott Wolff.

Microsoft Clear Type Tuner

I came across this handy ClearType tuner from Microsoft. It "automagically" tunes LCD displays to give the best possible output for the ClearType settings built into Windows XP. I used it on my home computer, and it produced noticeably better results.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm

January 12, 2005

We had dinner with mom and dad today. I was well over 45 minutes late due to an accident on Country Hills Blvd. and Beddington Dr. I spent almost two hours in the car making a trip that on a good day would have taken me only 25 minutes. Very frustrating. I did have a box of Krispy Kreme's to keep me company though.

Erin and I sat down with dad this evening to update our insurance.

We had stake priesthood meeting last night. The stake presidency did very well -- Rick, as usual, gave a very good talk. President Seidel spoke about following the prophet; I missed a good part of President Heningers talk because I was doing the count. President Melchin spoke about the upcoming 2005 Alberta Centennial, and how we should celebrate the year by inviting those around us to find out more about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Of note was a double quartet of young men who performed twice. They were spectacular. I don't know all of the young men who participated, but I saw Pat Gilchrest & Daniel Murdock and three of the Matthews boys. To be honest, they were excellent.

I still don't have things quite worked out with work with respect to the new ownership. I'm hopefull to have everything resolve this week -- that's what I've been saying for the past three weeks though -- maybe this week. I'm going to Toronto this week for a couple of days to meet some of the exsisting IT staff, and hopefull come to some consensus regarding the future direction of IT for the organization.

Without Begining, Without End...

Before retiring for the evening I came across this Carl Sagan quote while reading the book, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson and I got so excited I had to sit down and capture all the ideas that came to me while reading it:

"Carl Sagan in Cosmos raised the possibility that if you traveled downward
into an electron, you might find that it contained a universe of its
own...

"Within it, organized into the local equivalent of galaxies and smaller
stuctures which are themselves universes at the next level and so on forever --
an infinite downward regression, universes within universes, endlessly.
And upward as well."

This statement nicely articulates a sentiment I've had for a very long time but haven't been able to express. I've often wondered about the scriptural phrase, "no beginning and no end". I think it's a pretty difficult concept for our mortal minds to understand. No beginning? How is that possible? Everything has a begining... doesn't it?

The closest I've come to understanding the concept of "no beginning" is to consider a simple illustration. (Keep in mind that every example I can come up with applies the abstract concept to some concrete thing, i.e. space or time...)

Imagine cutting a standard piece of 8.5" X 11" paper in half; now, discard one of the halves and cut the remaining half into half again. Discard one of the halves and cut the remaining half in half again. Repeat this process infinitely. You may think that eventually you are left with nothing... but this can never be. By definition you are only ever cutting the paper in half, and therefore you will always have half of what you had previous to the cut. Always! Theoretically, the cutting never stops because you're always left with one half of what you started with.

Obviously this illustration breaks down when considered practically, i.e., we don't have tools to cut paper in half infinitely -- eventually the paper becomes too small to handle properly. But consider the example with respect to the concept of no beginning and no end. It is conceptually possible to spend the rest of eternity cutting a single 8.5" X 11" in half. No end.

Now I admit this next part requires a bit of a mental leap, but I haven't been able to verbalize it any other way yet. Compare the paper cutting example above to tracing back to the beginning of the piece of paper -- not the day the paper came out of the mill, but rather the root of the paper ie: the exact point at which the paper ceases to occupy space, and instead there is a void. By cutting the paper in half in an attempt to get to this beginning... you will never get there, there will always be some infinitley small portion of the paper left. Effectively, there is no beginning. (I know, I know... it still needs some work -- but it make complete sense in my mind.)

Now another example.

Imaging that after cutting the paper into some ridiculously small halves, say 1 X 10^-100 millimeters squared you were magically able to shrink yourself small enough such that the dimensions of the piece of paper were, in proportion your new miniscule size, 8.5" X 11". Keep this image in your mind... and gaze around you. Now look up into the space above you to the place where the enormous you once stood and consider how big you once were. It's basically unimaginable.

I think it's remarkable that 21st century astronomers look out into the heavens and see some very small fraction of the totality of space (if there is such a thing); similarly particle physicists stare into the most powerful electron microscopes mankind has ever devised, and observe only largest particles we know exist.

No beginning? No end? Definitely.

January 5th, 2005

Sean came over last night to help me give Matthew a blessing. Matt has been having ear infections off and on for the past three months or so. The doctor has prescribed three different anti-biotics. The third one (Zythromax) seems to be working, but Matt was a real bear to put to bed regardless.

Had a centennial committee meeting last night. It went pretty well. Tom (Saunders) does a great job of bringing people together. I'm also quite impressed with Ian Miller -- he's very well spoken, and quite agressive with the issues he's passionate about. To some that can come off as bulldog-ish, I don't take it that way at all -- infact, I quite appreciate it.

We had terrible snow today. Winter seems to be catching up with us finally.

The servers at work crashed today, and I spent most of the morning trying to bring them back up. Because of the problem I missed a tour at the NE center for my new coleagues at LifeMark. Oh well.

Jan 1, 2005 (New Year's Eve Party, Tsunami and Resolutions)

My first entry of the new year.

Erin and I went to the stake new year's eve party. It was quite fun -- dramatically different from previous years. The stake has always struggled accomodating the various age groups at this type of a party, mostly because new-year's parties are typically dances. That was changed this year.

Of course there was dancing, but there was a bunch of other stuff too. We had various games, ping-pong, fuseball, video games, Rook, karaoke, blow-up sumo wrestling, a commedian, magician and a blow up obsticle course. I'd say there was approximatly 300 people there -- quite well attended. Erin and I both had fun. Kevin and Elise went to a movie with mom and dad, then they joined us after the movie.

We've been watching the television for the past few days, keeping up with the terrible Tsunami disaster in Sri-Lanka, Indonesia and surrounding areas. As of this writting more about 150,000 people have died. It's definatle the most catastrophic event of 2004, likely in the last 25 years or more. The world community has rallied around the surviors and made some substantial donations. President Hinckley has asked the church to fast for the families of the victims, and to make a generous contribution to the church's relief efforts. It's remarkable to think that during the September 11, 2001 terroist attacks on the United States approximately 4000 people were killed -- this Tsunami in the Indian Ocean has taken rougly 40 times as many lives.

This year I resolve to keep the resolutions I set last year. Do it this year for heaven's sake!

December 24, 2004

Christmas Eve day!

Had lunch at Kevin and Elise's place, it was really nice. After lunch dad and Kev went out to try to fly dad's kite -- didn't work. It's a little strange to me that on December 24th there's almost no snow, and the weather is temperate enough to fly a kite.

We're going over to the Erin's folks place this afternoon to have our traditional "Twelve Days of Christmas" meal. Mom and dad, Melinda and Micheal, and Grandpa and Grandma Melchin will be joining us.

I've still got some gifts to wrap for Erin.

Newsmap

In the last year or so, I've seen this cool newsmap at least twice before -- and I've never bookmarked it. Consider it blogged!

Accessing the Child Rows of a DataTable from the DataBinder.Eval Method of a DataGrid or Repeader

I found this article that shows how to access the child rows of a DataTable from the DataBinder.Eval method of a DataGrid.

http://www.devpapers.com/article/237

ASP.NET Databinding Article

Here's a simple, comprehensive article on some advanced ASP.NET databinding techniques.

http://openmymind.net/databinding/index.html

December 13, 2004

It happened really quickly, but somehow I wasn't surprised. Gracie and I were sitting in sacrament meeting yesterday, (Erin was home with Matt who was at home ill). Gracie cried from the moment I put her on my lap -- she kept complainig about her tummy hurting. I assumed it was because she hadn't eaten enough before leaving for church (this is becoming a constant problem). I kept telling her that I would take her right home after church to get something to eat.

Then it happend. She was still sitting on my lap, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see her slightly hunched over, and could feel that her body was stiff. Right away I knew she was throwing up. And I wasn't just a little bit -- it was lots! I could tell how much she had thrown up because I could feel it almost instantly all over my shirt and tie. I didn't look down to assess the damage, instead I looked over at Lara for a cloth, or at a napkin of some sort -- which she didn't have. I looked behind me at Kevin, with that look of desperation that says, "please find me a cloth...". He looked back at me as if to say, "uh, can you see Gracie is vomiting all over you?" Unfortunately he didn't have a cloth either.

So, without any cleaning device, I picked Gracie up (being very carefull not to spill the vomit which was now resting nicely in a pool that I had created with my suit coat), and walked her out of the chapel into the washroom to clean her up. A special thank you to Lara for following me.

After a brief clean up, I took off her dress and stockings and bundeled her little pantied bum up in her coat to take her home. I explained to Erin what had happened, and I wrongly assumed that Grace was done with the vomitting. It continued on and off all evening. We gave her two tablespoons of water every 15 mintues, and invariably it came back up. I called the Calgary Health Region Health Link number and spoke to a nurse. The nurse advised me to continue with our fluid regimen, and said that it wasn't necessary to bring her in to the hospital. Fortunaley at about 8:30 the vomiting stoped (save one last episode at about 1:30 AM -- which thankfully wasn't a very big deal). Unfortunately for Erin, her sickness was just begining.

At about 9:30 I called Jeff Shipley (our home teacher, who had co-incidently come over this morning to visit us) and asked him to assist me in giving Gracie a blessing. Gracie was very accomodating, even though she was in such pain. I explained to her what we were going to do, and she sat still, and was very quiet. After we administered to her, she said thank you to Jeff, which was the first thing she had said other than "my tummy hurts" all evening. I took that as her first sign of getting better.

Shortly after Jeff came over, we put Gracie to sleep. I slept in Gracie's bed, and made sure she got a little bit of water every few hours. Erin slept in her own bed and tried to keep down what little dinner she had eaten. So far today, Erin has been the worst.

It's now 2:30 (almost exactly 24 hours after Gracies first episode). I typing this entry and Gracie is once again sitting on my lap -- this time a much happier girl. Erin has just woken up from an hour nap, and she's starting to fell better too (sort of).

AB.NET User Group

I went with Karl and Rich to the AB.NET user group meeting today. It was a lunch-time presentation sponsored by a company called Quadrus. The speaker was a fellow named Joel Semeniuk, he spoke about Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). He had a really cool demo where he used a webservice to populate an Excel spreadsheet that created a graph.

The format of the meeting was nice and short -- they did a very good job of keeping it to one hour. At the end of the presentation they gave away some prizes, Karl didn't put his name on his entry form, and they drew his form (or at least they drew a form with no name -- which we're pretty sure was Karl's). Too bad.

I'm Drying Out

Man, I'm really dry.

Search Engione Optimization

While doing some research on search engine optimization for Rick's site, I came across this interesting article.