Thu Nov 06, 2008
I don't think I ever posted these
Here are the first two segments of the slideshow I put together for Julie's 40th birthday:
Part 1: 1968-1974
Part 2: 1974-1982
I have the other 4 parts at home still waiting to be uploaded.
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What won the election for Obama?
As the Wednesday morning quarterbacking commences, there are many different theories about this year's election, most prevalent is that Obama won because of the economic crisis. I took a look at the polling data, and if you go back to the period before the conventions, Obama had a lead of approximately 2%. He finished with a 52-46 victory, approximately 6%, so if we adjust the final results across the entire map by +2 for McCain and -2 for Obama, how would that possibly have affected the results?
As it turns out, he would still have won, but we would not be talking about the sweeping victory we are discussing today. Instead, we would be talking about how the Mountain West became Blue and flipped the result of the election from a Republican win in 2004 to a Democratic win in 2008. North Carolina, Indiana, and Florida would still be red, Ohio and Virginia would be close calls, but Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico would still be solidly blue.
I think that's the core of what has really changed since 2004, and that is what I'm sure Republicans are most concerned about long-term. The demographics of the country are changing, and the country as a whole is becoming a lot more like Colorado than Kentucky. Honestly, if his brother had not just presided over a not-so-popular 8 years, Jeb Bush would have been a very strong candidate this year. It will be interesting to see who emerges from the Republican party to become a challenger to Obama in '12.
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Tue May 20, 2008
Whew!
Threw a big 40th birthday party for Julie this weekend. I had been planning thjings for quite a while, the past 6-8 weeks, gathering photos for a slideshow and emails from freinds and family for a scrapbook. I wound up pulling an all-nighter on Saturday (the first time I had done that since college) and everything came together great. I will be uploading the slideshow movies to YouTube, and there are some pictures from the party on flickr already: click here to see them.
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Wed Apr 23, 2008
Hmm. It's been a while
OK, so I'm looking at our website and thinking, "gosh, this is really old and out-of-date." When I notice that the weblog is apparently entirely broken. Cool. So, after a good bit of digging around in settings files, etc., I think it is back up and running.
Been a while since I last put something up here (2+years, it would appear), so what has been going on?
More...
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Tue Jan 31, 2006
The words you never expect to write
It has taken me almost 3 months to finish this post. I've never had a harder time finding the words to say. I still may come back and tweak this as necessary.
My father died Monday, November 7th, he was 61.
Growing up as the oldest child, there were only a few people who really knew me "all my life", from the moment I was born. That circle is now even smaller.
More...
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Thu Jan 26, 2006
I will eventually be posting again, don't worry
I need to finish one very important post about what's been going on over these past few months, then I will try to get back on a regular schedule. Been down in Orlando this week, and have renewed enthusiasm about blogging (and other stuff, too. Share that later.)
Jon.
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Fri Nov 04, 2005
Very sad news
Just found out today that a card-playing friend has succumbed to a rare disease he has been fighting for a couple of years now.
Mike, you will be sorely missed.
See the website his father, Peter, has been maintaining for more information.
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Tue May 03, 2005
Upgraded to Tiger
Been playing around with 10.4 since Saturday. Upgrade went smoothly. New features seem cool, but I'm not sure if they warrant a major version upgrade.
One thing I was contemplating doing is creating a dashboard widget for Notes mail, something like Notes Minder (since there is no OS X equivalent). I had hoped that the ability to launch the Notes client natively to read the message would be simple, but that apparently requires that WebKit (Safari) know how to access a notes: URL. After some digging, it appears that Notes does not register itself with LaunchServices in OS X, so it cannot be set up to accept notes:// URLs. If anyone out there has more knowledge of this than I, feel free to drop me a line.
I'd like to get that working, because I am trying to convince myself of the utility of Dashboard. As it is, it seems like a nifty feature that I won't use that much, but to be able to quickly see senders and subjects of new messages in my inbox would be great.
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Thu Feb 10, 2005
Sat Feb 05, 2005
A year ago today
There have been relatively few days in my life that I can look back upon and identify as days when my life changed, but February 5th, 2004 was definitely one of those days.
Starting in November, 2003, we had been spending all of our time and energy working to complete all of the paperwork necessary for our adoption. We had a videotape of Lera, and a brief medical summary, but as is typical for Russian adoptions, many of the terms used on the report were confusing or downright scary. We had sent copies of the video and medical report to US doctors, who had not really given us any encouraging news. There were simply too many unknowns for them to be able to make a solid recommendation, and there were some things (low height and weight, for instance) that made them worry.
Thanks to Julie's extensive research on the internet, we found some doctors in Moscow who would agree to travel to Kostroma to do a medical evaluation, assuming that the orphanage gave them permission. We selected one, Dr. Natalia Belova, and worked through our agency to get the orphanage to agree to allow her to come visit Lera. On February 4th, she took the overnight train from Moscow.
Mid-morning on the 5th, Julie and I were sitting in our bedroom, waiting for her call. We were both totally nervous, trying to think of what we would do if the news was bad, good, or mixed, as we both expected it would be. Then the phone rang. We took a deep breath and answered. It was a little difficult to hear at first, but Dr. Belova was obviously impressed with Lera. She had done all sorts of physical and cognitive testing, and she said that Lera was on age level cognitively, surprising for any child in an orphanage, much less a deaf child who has little or no language. She said that Lera was obviously well cared for and much loved by the orphanage staff, and she had no reservations at all. She wrote up an extensive report, and took lots of digital pictures, including this one.
Looking back on it all now, it is hard to believe that we ever had any doubts, but there was definitely the possibility a year ago that, if the news from Russia had been bad, we might have made different choices. In any case, it was obvious from that day forward that our life was never going to be the same.
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