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Last night when I arrived home Riles was in a stellar mood. Court had been watching him play on the floor by himself for some time. As the night progressed we noticed that he was being quite pleasant all night. During dinner he sat politely and ate. We happened to notice while he ate his eyes were half closed. Riles isn’t typically a tired child, he’s on the go all day long.

We started running the stats and something wasn’t adding up. He was focused and played alone, he ate without incident and appeared tired. Court gave him the ol’ Back-0f-the-hand thermometer test (much more pleasant than the official rear-end check). We debated for awhile whether he was warm or not. But by 7pm it was quite evident that he was running a temp. He was quite tired and ready for bed. There wasn’t much we could do except give him some ibuprofen and put him down for bed.

When we started this whole parenting thing I was quite afraid of knowing when was the right time to do something with Riles. How was I to know when he’s hungry? tired? sick? If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that I will never know when any of those things happen.

Over time I think we’ve learned that our best guess is probably good enough. There’s no point with struggling to get an exact temp when the forehead test will suffice.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 8:38 am under Riley sick play eat food
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With the rapidly changing weather patterns here in MN my allergies have been acting up. It’s never on those dreary rainy days either. It’s always on the hot and humid days that follow. For the last week I’ve been fighting a cold of as well as our diseased caring child brings home more germs than Mr. Clean can kill off. Yesterday I had to admit that I needed to see the doctor. Last time I waited for my allergies to magically fix themselves I ended up with a sinus infection. That was 5 weeks of hell that I care not to replicate.

The doc told me that luckily I did not have a brain tumor or a sinus infection. While good news, it wasn’t about to solve the 5 day headache I had. Nothing could get rid of the headache. I tried caffeine, ibuprofen, sinus medication, etc…None of them even put a dent in the pain. The doc prescribed me some Flonase and sent me on my way.

Unfortunately the Flonase isn’t a miracle drug. I shoot it up my nose for 10 days. I should see relief in about 4-5 days. But the worst and most ironic part of Flonase is it’s smell. It’s a nasal spray so it goes to work immediately upon “shooting”. It smells like flowers, the very element that sets off my allergies. Now I’m no rocket scientist, but I can tell you one thing that I think I’m having phantom sinus drainage just from the fabricated flower scent. It’s either that or I’m allergic to the smell of an allergy medicine.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 7:09 am under drugs sick allergies
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I attended the Minnesota Developers Conference 2007 yesterday, a nerdfest for .Net developers. All in all it was awesome. I’ve attended very few conferences in my life. It’s nice to get out and mingle with nerds. I could talk ad nauseum about some things. It was also a great way to come up to speed fast with the new stuff coming in .Net 3.5.

I was most surprised, though, by the amount of old and new friends I ran into at the conference.   I bumped into at least one person from just about every job I’ve worked since 1998. It was awesome. I forgot what a large network of cool people I have. It made my day.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 7:25 am under nerd .net friends
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In case you were curious if Riley was still alive. He’s managed to survive 9 months of us.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 6:58 am under Riley photo
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I finally solved my problem with my MDA cellphone, I bought a new phone. While bidding for phones on E-bay is a great way to pass the day, I wasn’t winning any auctions and I really needed to get back into the world of communication. I picked up a cheap Samsung Stripe. There’s nothing fancy about the phone, which is the best part. It actually works. For the last 4 years I’ve always had some sort of gizmo phone, whether it be the oddball Nokia rotary dial-esque phone or my MDA, calling has always been secondary to surfing the web. I’ve struggled to actually have a usable phone. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve accidentally called someone, hung up on someone, or answered a call from my pocket. I am tickled pink to have a device that solves all these problems. The phone makes phone calls. It’s got good reception, great speaker volume, and is quick to find numbers. The clam-shell keeps me from the accidental dialing and answering.

The only downside is that I’ve lost all my numbers. The MDA is D.O.A. It’s sort of fun, though, to answer the phone without knowing who is on the other end. It’s always a surprise to find out who’s calling again.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 7:22 am under cell phones pocket gizmo nerd geek
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After replacing the battery in my phone I was back online. Unfortunately I let that battery run out. The MDA phone that I have is notorious for battery drain. When the battery goes dead the phone doesn’t turn on again. The phone needs the battery to function. So much so that I can’t even charge the battery if it’s dead because the phone requires the battery to boot. See the conundrum? If I don’t have batter power then how is the phone going to boot so I can charge the battery? Also, the new battery didn’t solve the problem of the MDA holding a charge for at most 36 hours. I’m not the most careful person in the world. I need more time to plan to charge my phone.

Long story short - my phone is dead again.

Off to E-Bay I go! We recently had a decent experience when purchasing a phone for Courtney. Her Samsung spent a day in the rain and had to be promptly replaced. We purchased a refurbished replacement from a seller on E-Bay. The phone came to us slowly but in excellent quality.

My first stop was back to the same seller for my phone. I’ve decided to go back to a traditional phone…for now. Depending on how my E-Bay experience goes I’ll either get a Motorola PEBL or the Samsung T629. I just want a phone that works well and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

So I have to wait, now 13 more hours to know if I won an auction. E-Bay is so addicting. It’s like winning your own personal lottery. Except you’re paying to win.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 7:02 am under cellphones
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If you were wondering if we still had a child — yes we do. Riley turned 9 months old a few weeks ago. About 6 weeks ago he figured out crawling. Shortly there after he figured out how to pull himself up on everything. Courtney and I haven’t sat down since. We spend our time with him making sure he’s safe. It’s a tough job when he can get into just about anything.

We are looking forward to heading to the fair this year. We will be one of those “wagon people” this year and we’re quite excited. Sure, every other year we’ve gone to the state fair we’ve complained about those inconsiderate people who stop in the midde of the walking paths to futz with something/someone in the wagon. Well, the benefits of watching Riley giggle and laugh (and probably scream a bit) outweigh what other people think.

The picture is from early July. Riles was 8 months and a week old. I call Riles the drunken sailor because, while he’s able to stand up and cruise about the furniture, he does so with an funny swagger in his step. He’s definitely a ways away from walking.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 8:43 pm under Riley walking fair
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“I’m supposed to give you this, ” he said with a thrust of an object.

“Oh, okay, is there anything I should know about it?”

“Yeah, i didn’t charge it last night so you’re gonna want to plug it in.” With those kinds of instructions, I knew I was in for trouble.

I managed to avoid “on-call” duty at work for my first 2 months of my new job. I knew I couldn’t avoid it much longer. My day had come.

My co-worker had handed me a Blackberry with no instructions on how to use it or how I go about answering support issues. I took the phone with little regard, nervous about what could happen with it in my possession. I checked to make sure I knew how to turn it on, check the contact list, and check out the Bricks game everyone was raving about. I put it on the charger as suggested and waited.

I took my new found nemesis home with me. I checked the call logs on the phone to glean any type of information I could about call frequency, duration, and especially time. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. In fact, over the course of the previous shift my co-worker had only one issue during work hours. I could handle that. I put the phone on my dresser and we went to bed.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

11pm, the cell rings. I literally fall out of bed running to answer the thing. “Oh great, just must luck,” I think. I grab the phone and run out of the bedroom so I don’t disturb Courtney. There’s a message on the phone. “I didn’t even hear it ring!” I mutter. I fall into the kitchen and turn on some lights to help me concentrate.

Scroll, scroll, push button, scroll, push…”What the hell?” From what I can tell the Blackberry had received an email, not a phone call. I read through the email and it’s a server check telling me that a server fell offline and came back online a minute later (for the uninitiated, that’s quite common). Whew, no major issue, no action required. I head back to bed.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

“JESUS!” 5 minutes later the phone starts humming again. I repeat the same process: grab phone, run out to kitchen, check messages. Again, it’s just more server checks. “Godammit…” I go back to bed.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

“For F’s SAKE!” I shout in my quiet voice. The phone marches across the dresser again at 2am. By this point I have already lost about an hours worth of sleep. I was just getting back into the swing of things when it started ringing. I quickly check. More server checks. I’m going to throw this thing across the room at any moment.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

“Oh, this is just plain ridiculous, ” I tell Court, who is also awake. “They’re just emails! Not even messages!”

“Can’t you turn off the message notifications?” She asks.

“NO!” I say and go back to bed. The real answer to her question is “Yes, just not at 2:30am when I’m drowsy and pissed off.”

I think it buzzed one last time at 4:30am. By that time I had been awake more than asleep that it didn’t really phase me. I compared my late night experience with the previous week on call. Sure enough it was my shift that received the most over night notifications.

When I got into work I asked my co-worker about the server checks. He said, “Well, if it’s REALLY important, someone will end up calling you anyway.” That’s what I thought.

Night 1 down, 6 more to go.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 2:42 pm under cellphones, on call, work
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I was rear-ended this morning the Mazda. I was at a red stop light. When the light turned green the lady behind me thought I moved…and I didn’t. The hatch and bumper on the Mazda have been crushed, literally, but I’m okay. I’m quite lucky that Riles wasn’t in the car. I think I would have had a heart attack if he was.

I can only assume getting the car fixed is going to be a big pain in the ass. I love the Mazda and it’ll kill be to be without it. I’ve never been in a car accident before and of course, I didn’t have any insurance information on me. This’ll teach me a lesson in preparedness.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 9:58 am under No Tags
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Courtney’s always telling me to put my phone down. Ever since I procured my MDA I’m constantly checking something on it.

Well, the day came last week. I woke up Wednesday morning and was unable to turn my phone on. It’s always been a little finicky with battery life, barely running for a day and a half without a charge. While out with friends Tuesday night the battery ran dry and it died. An overnight charge did not bring the monster back. So I’ve been gadgetless and incommunicado for an entire week.

Courtney claims that it was a well planned device hiccup with all the iPhone nonsense of the last week. Sadly, though, I’m in the middle of my current T-Mobile contract and I’m not willing to pay $200 to hop carriers. So I’m left trying to fix or replace my dead MDA ASAP.

It’s been a quiet week if anything. I can say I’ve been hindered too much without the phone because, in all honesty, I don’t know what I’m missing. No one can get a hold of me so it doesn’t really matter if I miss it. Granted, there were a few times this weekend while at Chad and Tina’s wedding that I wished I had some sort of communication device.

So after dilly-dallying for an entire week I finally ordered a new cellphone battery. It’s a cheap attempt at fixing the phone. It just needs to make it 8 more months until my contract ends. Then I can get my iPhone. w00t.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 9:31 am under gadgets, phone
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