Speljamr.com

We left the hospital today. Right around rush hour. That was the most nerve wracking drive of my life. Nothing like having lots of traffic zipping in and out around you while you take your newborn home. At least things feel better now that everyone is home.

Shaun continues to do well and keeps getting better and better at the feeding process. I spent several hours holding him today. It is simply the most incredible thing to hold that tiny body and see a little piece of yourself there. He sat there looking at me for at least 10 minutes straight. You could just see his little brain working trying to figure it all out. I can’t wait to get to know him and see how his own personality develops as he grows up.

Grandma & Grandpa Kasperek stopped in today and Grandpa just didn’t want to put the little guy down. I feel bad for Grandma: she got to hold him just as he decided to throw a little fit. Well, maybe next time.

Another little tid bit I didn’t get to mention previously, Shaun shares his birthday with his late great grandma Finucane. That’s a cool kind of coincidence.

As expected, day one for Shaun was a busy day for the entire family. Lots of visitors, family and friends. We have plenty of ballons to bring home now. I imagine they will float around my ceiling at home for some time, giving Shaun something to watch.

I missed a couple of details in my last post because of its briefness: Shaun was 5lbs. 13.3 oz. at birth and the official date and time was 4/15 at 5:41pm. You’ll notice the last post is set to his official birth time, I figured this was woth immortilizing on this blog.

Mom made a decision yesterday to try breat feeding. Originally we were going to bottle feed because mom thought she would be taking drugs (for her diabetes) that would interfere with breast feeding, but that turns out to be false. Shaun made his first attempts early in the day, but they were difficult. By evening he was starting to be a pro, so I suspect the breast feeding will go well.

We got a bunch more pictures as well. When I find some time I will post them up in the photo gallery. Right now though I have only a few minutes to post this update while I wait for the laundry to finish.

Mom and I went in for our routine tests, and ended up having the baby. I’ll post more later. For now here’s a picture:

I have discovered podcasting and I am completely addicted. As you can see, I have started adding some of the podcasts I follow to the side navigation/blogroll. If you don’t know what podcasting is read this.

But my fascination with podcasting doesn’t stop with listening, I’m thinking about starting my own podcast. It’ll probably be something with some independent music showcase and some general talk, but I’m open for ideas. So, if any of my readers have some ideas about what I should podcast, leave a comment and let me know.

Where I live, from above:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.926331,-78.718629&spn=0.004860,0.007875&t=k&hl=en

About 7 years ago I had a nice Sony Viao Laptop. This baby was top of the line at the time, with 150MGhz Pentium processor, 16MB RAM and a 2GB hard drive. Good stuff. The laptop used to sit on a TV table at the end of the bed (I was living with my girlfriend of the time). At some point a glass of pop was left sitting on the TV table next to the laptop. Big mistake, as it took just 30 seconds to bump into the table and send the pop all over the laptop. Needless to say, this was the end of the laptop.

I did take the laptop into a dealer for repair, but they said it would need a new motherboard and that would cost more than a new laptop. So I put the laptop away, never to be used again.

Fast Forward 7 years to last Tuesday. I found the laptop in its carrying case as I was cleaning up the basement. So I figure what the hell, lets see what will happen if I plug it in and power it up. Holy power surge Batman! The thing actually fired up. I was able to scan through the file system and see several files I’d like to recover.

So last night I sat with the laptop and tried to get a wireless network card installed on it. First I tried a spare Linksys card I had. I should have know better, I had problems with that card on my current laptop. I spent almost an hour fooling around with it and couldn’t get it to see the access point properly. So, I pulled out my current laptop and took the Orinoco Gold card I use on it and put it in the old Sony. 15 minutes later I had a working woreless connection. So I then made a few changes to the network setting so it could see the network domain and then rebooted the machine.

Here is where my victory comes to a complete end. On reboot I log into the domain and the machine comes to a stop. Everything just hangs. So I power it down and try to boot it again. This time all I get is some beeps. Probably signals that would tell a technician what is wrong. So now I’m back to square one with a dead laptop.

Since she won’t work now, I figure I’ll go ahead with the autopsy. Who knows maybe I can figure out how to clean it up enough to get it working again. Or maybe I should just put it away again for another 5-7 years. It might start working again.

Karlyn and I were driving down the 290 today on our way home from some baby shopping. Not long after getting on the 290 we see a car in front of us, some sort of reddish-brown chevy rust bucket with it’s left blinker light on, moving erratically from one side of its lane to the other. After just a few moments, and a near accident later, we realized that this guy had to be intoxicated. So I then handed my cell phone to Karlyn and told her to call 911.

So Karlyn starts talking to the 911 operator, goes through the all of the information, where we are, what direction we are going, her name, etc… Mind you, at no point has the operator bothered to put out a dispatch call to the police. Then all of a sudden, because we are traveling down the 290, Karlyn is told she’s out of their jurisdiction, in this case Amherst, and she’ll have to be transfered. She then gets transfered to the State police 911 operator and has to go through the whole story all over again. In the mean time this guy has almost caused 2 more accidents.

At this point we are just about ready to pass the State trooper barracks located at the intersection of the 90 and the 33. I relay this information to Karlyn who relays it to the 911 operator. She then tells the operator that the car is turning west on the 33. In my mind I figure this is easy. The operator tells the State Trooper dispatchers and a car should be on the road in half a minute and they stop this guy from killing someone. Shows how much I know. Instead the 911 operator was abrupt and dismissive about the call and told Karlyn, “ok, we have the information. goodbye.” Karlyn says her tone was that of someone who didn’t care and didn’t think this was a big deal. All this time I’m still following the guy, from a good distance of course, and he has managed to almost hit 2 more cars in his swerving from lane to lane.

I’ll tell you, I am NOT impressed with the 911 performance in this situation. Karlyn and I managed to follow this guy all the way to Grider St., and then down Grider, with absolutely no sign of police anywhere. Even on are ride back home, which was back down the 33, there was not one cop; and the Trooper barracks looked like it still had the same number of parked cars in it.

So tell me, do we just not care about drunk drivers anymore? Do they have to kill someone or cause an accident before anyone feels like bothering?

Is there any communication between the police in this region? Seems to me that if you are travelling and trying to report something, it doesn’t make sense to keep transfering you when you could be passing through several town. I probably passed through 3 different jurisdictions during this incident.

This all just happened about 45 minutes ago, and I’m pretty mad about it. I think I might see if 2 on Your Side is interested in this story.

For the past week there has been some ongoing drama in my family. Seems I was right about my sister-in-laws fiance; he’s a loser and an asshole.

About 3 months ago (give or take a month for my bad memory) he kicked her out of the house they were living together in. My thought was that she would get smart and make the break up permanent, but it was a false hope. Some time last month she moved back in with him. Basically he was hungry and he wasn’t getting laid so he begged her to come back, or at least that’s my interpretation.

Well, it’s one of those “I told you so” events, as he has kicked her out once again. And now it is going to get nasty, as in law suite kind of nasty.

See, my mother-in-law had been helping them with some money for various things, like a groceries and half the down payment for the losers lawn mower (under the agreement he would come cut their grass). He also took (read stole) a vacuum cleaner and steam cleaner from my sister-in-law, that her mother bought her, and traded it in for a fancy Kirby vacuum. Well, now mom would like her money back as she did not buy a Kirby or authorize the trade-in of the original merchandise. And this loser now has the balls to say that my sister-in-law owes him money! And he’s going to sue her for it! I’ll say it again - LOSER!

Well, unfortunately for him the family is willing to counter sue and seems to have much better evidence (as in bank statements) that show my sister-in-law did not cost him all his money, as he claims she did.

Oh, and here’s a real kicker: he fucked some other chick on the $400 bed that my sister-in-law bought him for his birthday. And he thinks she owes him money?

At this point, can you tell I’m really pissed at this guy? Personally I think men (or is it boys?) who act like this should have their balls cut off. I hope the Piece of Shit reads this and starts to understand what a LOSER he is. Probably wouldn’t happen though. Sorry, wishful thinking on my part.

Ok, I’m done venting now…..

My niffty USB Swiss Army Knife came yesterday!