Les Jones

Test-crazy pediatrician

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Melissa took Katie in for a checkup a few weeks ago. She mentioned to the doctor that Katie’s leg still hurt a little, this after a bout of temporary sinuvitis. The doctor referrered her to another doctor for tests.

Katie said her tummy hurt. The doctor ordered an ultrasound of her stomach.

The doctor asked Melissa if she had noticed anything unusual about Katie, and Melissa mentioned that Katie, aged 4, had been reverting to baby talk sometimes. The doctor ordered an MRI of Katie’s brain.

At this point in the story I started protesting. Were we going to have an MRI of our child’s brain every time her behavior changed a little? Between age 4 and 18 behavioral changes were going to happen often.

Assuming an organic problem for behavioral changes and ordering an MRI was going to get expensive, not to mention how intrusive it is for the child and for the parent who takes her to the appointment. It also creates concern for us for all of these tests and doctor’s appointments. Melissa was apoplectic worrying about what could be wrong with Katie - surely the doctor wouldn’t recommend all of these followups unless there was something of concern.

I felt redeemed when the doctor’s office called and said that the insurance company had pre-emptively refused to pay for the MRI, which the doctor promptly canceled, because they felt it lacked medical merit. I had a gloating, Itoldjaso moment, and Melissa agreed that she didn’t think she wanted to see that test-crazy pediatrician again.

Incidentally, no problems surfaced with Katie during the visit to the osteologist or with the stomach ultrasound. I think Katie’s babytalk is related to her having a sister 21 months younger and to the fact that Katie recently turned four. She sometimes says things like “I want to be the baby.” Getting old ain’t easy.

The Big Four Oh’s today

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 5 Comments |

You’d think I’d have something profound to say, but not really. Maybe next decade I’ll thinka somethin’.

Katie and Felix

Saturday, September 6th, 2008 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

This is one of our cats, Felix. Our other cat, Milo, is my favorite, but he gets nervous around the kids. Felix is easy going and puts up with toddler-style rough handling. We’re teaching the kids to be gentle with pets, but it’s a long process.

And now, another episode of “Air Conditioning Theater”

Monday, September 1st, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

I called the AC repairman for a record third time this summer. The AC would blow slightly coolish air a little while to little effect. Then the airflow would stop even though the AC unit and the central blower were running flat out.

I called the always-awesome Aaron at A and L Heat and Air and told him I thought the system was icing up. He came out immediately (because he’s awesome).

Aaron said that icing is usually a result of low refrigerant, but he wanted to check the coolant system first. When he did he found that the system was running 20 to 30% above normal pressure. He popped the top off the AC and found it was filthy. It looked like the inside of the fake Bigfoot freezer. After washing it out the pressure went down to normal and he topped off the refrigerant.

It’s running great again and at this late date I don’t expect any more problems this season. I’m getting sanguine about it all now. Every time I’m convinced that we can’t possibly patch this thing together again I manage to dodge another bullet with a four thousand dollar price sticker.

It Must Be Weird Having Me As a Dad

Saturday, August 9th, 2008 | Best Of, Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

KATIE: I’m hungry
ME: You’re hungry?
KATIE: I’m hungry.
ME: Do you want to eat some rocks?
KATIE: No!
ME: How about furniture?
KATIE: (laughing) No!
ME: We could eat a computer.
KATIE: (laughing) No!
ME: You can have this speaker.
KATIE: (laughing) No!
ME: Do you want to eat a movie?
KATIE: (laughing) No!
ME: There’s only one other thing I can think of to eat and that’s food. You want some food?
KATIE: Uh huh.

Speaking of Appliance Heck

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Busy Mom’s bragging about the fact she hasn’t had any appliance problems lately. (While confessing to being a serial digital camera killer). I haven’t lost any digital cameras lately or ever, but appliance problems - I’ve had those.

A little while ago our dishwasher stopped draining. Everything worked, but the water wouldn’t drain. I figured I could find all of the information I needed to fix it online. I tried removing the basket to see if it was stopped up. Nothing. I took out a dozen hex screws and looked under the basket contraption. Nothing.

I didn’t give up. For four weeks I used the wet-dry vac to vacuum the water out of the dishwasher before the rinse cycle and again when the rinse cycle finished. With two kids we run the dishwasher almost every day. You do the math.

Finally, I gave up. I paid for a spiffy new Bosch at Lowe’s and got the number to call on a weekday to schedule installation.

The next day I told my brother and he asked if I had tried cleaning the whatsit. I read up on that and in the process discovered that sometimes a failure to drain is caused by a hose that’s clogged at the sink end. I unscrewed the drain line under the sink, stuck a shish-ka-bob skewer in to clean out the gunk, and SHAZAM! Dishwasher fixed.

Sunday night we came back from the Fourth weekend to find an 81 degree house. We’ve now had our AC serviced for the second time this summer. Once I expect - our AC always goes out at least once a year over a fuse or capacitor or somesuch - but twice?

My heat and air guy came out Monday and fixed it by installing a “hard start capacitor”, but he warned me that he didn’t know how long it would last and suggested I start thinking about buying a new unit to the tune of four grand or so. If that happens I may get a heat pump so I’ll have another heat source if our similarly-old gas furnace konks out.

Charlie Made it OK

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Good news - Charlie came through bypass surgery with flying colors and was off the ventilator in record time.

Charlie’s Going in for Bypass Surgery

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 3 Comments |

My father-in-law went in for balloon angioplasty this morning, but they discovered that the blockage was too great, so he’ll have bypass surgery tonight. Melissa’s at the hospital with her mom.

Best Wishes to Charlie

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

My father-in-law is going in for a balloon angioplasty this morning. All of our good thoughts are going out to him today.

Conversation About a Snail, or, Photo-editing with Picasa: Focal B&W Filter

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

KATIE: Look at my snail!
ME: Oh, wow. What’s his name?
KATIE: Little Tiny Turtle.
…
KATIE: He’s really brown.

I took that photo Father’s Day morning after we dressed the girls. I loved the photo, but for some reason the picture was way out of focus:

I used Picasa’s Focal B&W effect in Picasa to salvage the picture by making the lack of sharpness less noticeable. The effect is pretty self-explanatory: set the point you want to be the center of your color circle, then use the sliders to adjust how big you want the circle to be and how distinct/sharp you want the edge of the circle to be.

See also:
- Photo-editing with Picasa: Fixing Orange Cast Under Fluorescent Light
- Photo-editing with Picasa: Graduated Tint

Katie’s First Baseball Game

Monday, June 9th, 2008 | East Tennessee, Home Life, Photos | Permalink | 4 Comments |

We took Katie to a Tennessee Smokies game against the Chattanooga Lookouts Saturday night. It was Katie’s first baseball game, first baseball hat, and first ice cream helmet, which turned out to be the highlight of the day.

We discovered Katie had a major misconception about going to a minor league baseball game.

“OK, Katie, here’s where the baseball game is going to be.”
“I’m going to win!”
“Oh, uh, Katie, you’re not going to play. We’re going to watch the team play.”
“Aw, man! I wanna play!”
“We’re going to watch some big boys play.”
“Only boys?”
“Yeah, tonight it’s only big boys.”
“Like daddy?”
“Right. Big boys like daddy.”
“When does daddy go play?”

I’m hoping that Child Protection Services doesn’t find out we took a three year old to a baseball game and charge us with child abuse. Kid was bored out of her mind.

Mostly she just hadn’t taken a nap, so she was punchy. She wanted this, she wanted that. If I left the seats she cried for me. If mommy left the seats she cried for her. Whatever side of the seats she was on she wanted to be on the other side. We left after three innings.

So, OK, we’ll try that again in a few years.

This was our first visit to Smokies Park, the new home of the Smokies. Before the team moved from Knoxville to Sevierville in 2000 they played in Bill Meyers Stadium. The new park isn’t as big as it looked from the interstate. It had been a decade since I’d seen a game at Bill Meyers, but it seemed like the new stadium was no bigger. Those Wikipedia links confirmed it: the capacities were 6,400 for the old stadium and 6,412 for the new.

Photography notes

I took the picture above with a Nikon 70-300mm F/4-5.6. I bought the 70-300mm as a wildlife lens, but it makes a passable sports lens if, like me, you’re an amateur on a budget and don’t mainly want it as a sports lens. It isn’t a fast lens, so I was shocked when I took the first picture of a swinging batter and captured that pic above with no blur on the bat.

Turns out I got a little bit lucky on that first shot. At that point in the swing the bat has essentially stopped moving. All of the other pictures I took with the swing earlier in the arc had a little bit of blur in the bat, but not too bad. As long as I kept the shutter speed as fast as I did in the picture above (1/640th sec.) they looked OK. Here’s another pic at 230mm, F/5.6, IS0 800 and 1/640th sec. It’s earlier in the swing so the bat’s moving faster, but the blur isn’t too bad by amateur photography standards:

For comparison, in the picture below I was fiddling around with my settings and had the shutter speed set to a slow 1/40th sec. with ISO 200 and F/7.1. The black bat is so blurred it looks like a cloud of smoke. Even the numbers on the batter’s shirt are blurred.

Sports photographers use fast lenses like an F/2.8 to freeze motion. With lenses that fast you can stop the action even when there isn’t much light (and with indoor sports there never is). I need to get an F/2.8 telezoom one day, but at those prices I reckon it won’t be today, and it won’t be tomorrow, either.

Natalie’s Second Birthday, Observed

Sunday, June 1st, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 3 Comments |

On Saturday the rain stayed away and we had a nice little party for Natalie at Carl Cowan Park. The kids had fun in the water park and we got to see some friends we hadn’t visited in a while. Beautiful day and great place for a kid-friendly birthday or picnic.

Happy birthday, sweetie.

P.S. We had the babysitters come along for the birthday party to help with the kids. We’ll definitely be doing that again. Having that little bit of support made a big difference in how much we were able to enjoy ourselves.

Is My Daughter Going to be a Redhead?

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 3 Comments |

My brother has always said he thought Natalie would have red hair. Sometimes her hair does seem to have a reddish tinge, and you can see it a bit in that picture.

One of the things I routinely do to improve digital photos is to use Picasa’s Saturate command to boost the color. When I did that to the photo above the red hair really jumped out. This is like the “artist’s conception” of Natalie with red hair.

Katie’s Very Important Lesson About Caterpillars

Friday, May 9th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Felix the cat has a cameo appearance.

Natalie Having Lunch with a Camel

Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

Photo by Melissa. Taken with a Panasonic FZ5 at the Knoxville Zoo.

Natalie Beating a Drum at the East TN Discovery Center

Friday, May 2nd, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

Check out the arms on that kid. My wife and I have been calling Natalie “long arms” since she was an infant. When we sat her at the table we were always surprised how far she could reach. Now people are saying how athletic she looks, and it’s true. She’s tall for her age (not quite two) with long limbs.

This shooting toddlers from above thing works pretty well. Another example here.

(And I don’t know what that black stuff is on her arm. Something she, uh, discovered, I guess.)

Babies Say the Cutest Things, Dogs Do the Grossest Things

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

Natalie’s favorite new word is “mine.” She and her sister have “Mine!” “Mine!” “Mine” arguments. Last night Natalie said her first grammatically complete sentence: “This is mine.”

Sometimes I wear earplugs to bed to help me sleep. The next day I generally can’t find the ones from the night before. Yesterday I discovered why. I had gotten out of bed, put my earplugs on the nightstand, taken a shower, and was walking back into the bedroom when I saw our dog Shorty eating my purple earplugs. I wonder if Shorty thought they’d taste like grapes, or like ears?

Conversation at the Computer

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 3 Comments |

So I’m reading the Wikipedia entry on Marion Barry and discover there’s a blackberry cultivar called the marionberry.

ME: So you know Marion Barry, the mayor of Washington, D.C.?
MELISSA: Yeah?
ME: So there’s a blackberry named the marionberry. It’s from 1956, though, so it wasn’t named after him.
MELISSA: 1956?
ME: Yep.
MELISSA: They had blackberries in 1956?
ME: Blackberries? Uh, yeah.
MELISSA: No way.
ME: You big geek. I’m not talking about the phones. I’m talking about actual blackberries.
MELISSA: You wait until you have a BlackBerry.

Katie and Natalie Easter Pictures 2008

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 | Holidays, Home Life | Permalink | 3 Comments |

We had the pictures done at Portrait Innovations. Cost was $15 per sheet, or three sheets of the same pose for $16.95. They’re very good at dealing with small children and were amazingly cheerful. You preview the photos on big screen Pioneer HDTVs and choose the ones you want.

It’s always bugged me that other portrait studios never provided a CD of the pictures. I was impressed that Portrait Innovations does and at no charge. The 606 x 404 pixel resolution is too low for printing, but fine for Web pages and email.

Katie Day 1274: I Had “The Talk” with Katie

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

Tonight I had “the talk” with my three year old daughter, Katie, and it confused her. I had to explain that green grapes were called “white grapes” even though they were green.

Katie Day 1272 - Gone Fishing for the First Time

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

I’ve been promising Katie I’d take her fishing when it got warmer. I think she probably enjoyed this as much as a real fishing trip.

That was at Sprout Studio for McKinley’s birthday party. I agree with Michael - great place for a kid’s party.

LATER: Initially I liked that last picture the best. After looking at them some more I like the middle picture the best. What’s sort of interesting is that the middle shot is the best composed according to the rule of thirds and the four powerpoints. In that middle picture Katie’s head is in the lower left powerpoint and ducky is in the upper right powerpoint.

Here’s a re-crop of that third picture that moves Katie’s noggin to the upper left powerpoint. I think this re-crop looks much better.

Pearls Before Swine

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 1 Comment |

OR

From the mouth of Babe the Pig Comes Pearls of Wisdom.

The Great 2008 Bean Bag Incident

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 6 Comments |

You remember how I said that bean bags were the big hit this last Christmas? Tonight Katie figured out how to unzip them.

Luckily we bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner last weekend, so this was a 15 minute inconvenience instead of a disaster. If you’ve ever thought about getting a Dyson, I highly recommend it. You never have to change bags, belts, or HEPA filters, it automatically adjusts to the right height, emptying it is no muss no fuss, and the built-in hose and attachment system work great.

We put the bean bag stuffing back in as we vacuumed it off of the floor. When it was all over I slathered the bean bag zipper in an entire tube of super glue so this will never, ever happen again.

The Ultimate Internet-age Baby Name

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Jonathan is looking for an Internet handle for baby C.

I’m thinking that for anyone who’s going to blog about their kids, the ultimate baby name is asdf.* Think of all the typing time you’d save!

* If it’s a boy. Obviously if it’s a girl it would be jkl;.

LATER: A comic via Paul Simer in comments:

Love in the Time of Influenza

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 | Home Life | Permalink | 5 Comments |

My wife’s got the flu now. She started coughing Sunday, felt bad yesterday and worse in the evening. About 5:00 this morning she got the cold chills. I put a heating pad under her and that stopped the chills.

This afternoon when she’s up to it I’ll take her to the doctor. When I was at that point Saturday night I would have needed an ambulance to make it to the doctor.

Luckily the kids were already at their grandmother’s to keep them from catching the flu from me, so they’re OK.