Morning

Well after not sleeping great last night, I gave Alan juice + his medicine and managed to get him off to school (I'd given him some cold medicine also).
I came home took nyquil (after almost sorting things out with walgreens) and slept.
I feel a bit better now.

I'm dreading tommorrow. Not because it's work. but there is rain/snow/ice etc for the next day or so.
I have no idea how we'll handle the commute and daycare.
It was easier when we had a sitter in her house and Mark actually worked at home once in a while. And my company allowed work from home
(He's been doing 5 days at the client since October).

I do have 4 vacation days to use up if I have to :(

Long interesting article on drug testing in children

http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?050110fa_fact

I'm grateful that the only medicine's Alan's had are amoxicillin and omnicef (and vitamins + flouride). I hope it stays this way for a long long time.

Names

Last night at the doctor's office there was a 2 month old girl (yes with pink all around) there with her mom and someone else. (Don't know why, didn't ask).
I asked her name.
Chase.
What's her middle name?
She doesn't have one.
I wanted to say - ARGH, you have doomed your little daughter to a life of being called Mr. Chase .....
I had a lot of Mr. Leslie in mails over the years. At least I was given the middle name Arlene so I'd often write out Leslie Arlene on documents so they knew.
It's not the only unisex name I know - there are a lot of Chris's, Kims, and Frans out there and I know a male and female Jordan personally.

But the worst name ever, is the wife of someone I know through a sci-fi club. Her name is Keith. (No idea what if anything her middle name is.)
I could only imagine what people thought when they were ordering wedding stuff - Steven and Keith????

Interview with Shirley Ann Jackson RPI President (interesting)

I attended WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) a similar regional engineering/technology school. I had no idea RPI had a female African American president (since 1999).

Interview with Shirley Ann Jackson RPI President

This aired on C-Span on Jan 2 @8p EST.

The transcript can be found at:
http://www.q-and-a.org/Program/?ProgramID=1003

She discussed her path to becoming the President of Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, what it takes to run an educational institution
and her concerns about the lack of minorities and women in
engineering and science.

She also mentioned that she did not become interested in math and
science until she began applying to college.

Lovely Tech Support from Verizon

Around 4:30 today I start losing connectivity - mail hangs coming in etc.

Anyway by 7:30 after reboots, breaks etc I call Verizon. Speak to a nice tech named Rick. We were working on the problem as it appeared to him to be line related. Alas after being told to connect/reconnet modem bypassing router and troubleshooting - as I put the phone down to reconnect the router, I dropped it upside. Lost the connection.

Still had problems so after short break to calm Mark and Alan (Mark seems to be unable to deal with handling Alan and not working sometimes), called again. Spoke to another tech (who's name I didn't get) who blamed it on the router. Gave me instructions on how to disconnect it, but wasn't helpful when I said I wanted to put things back the way they were in case something was lose. I gave up. Tried to connect husband's PC directly to internet, couldn't get it work.

Took break, gave Alan a bath, Mark put Alan to bed. Reconnected and rebooted my pc with the router (it's a Siemens, which verizon doesn't support.). It works now, mail comes in zoomingly fast. Go figure.

I'll make sure Mark's PC is working - but I bet it is.

(Yes, I'm the household tech support).

Oh, and could someone teach Alan that if I'm on the computer NOT to touch the mouse. I am removing him from the mouse 2 zillion times a day. Very annoying. I'd love to get him a laptop (old Windows) of his own with mouse to play kids games on. Cheap. (Kids games tend to be trailing edge). We don't have room in the room for a 3rd pc on this desktop.