[Weekly - F/Sa] Week In Review

[Tek7]

Work is still calm, though that's unlikely to last as we have multiple projects on hold and our team tends to get the business end of business decisions. Based on past experience, I wouldn't be surprised if all the projects got "un-frozen" in rapid succession, leaving us with too much work and not enough people to do it. We did have a team member who had been on medical leave for months give his notice, so we'll be able to backfill that position. That's great news!

Today is a FRANTIC CLEANING DAY in our house, so I'm going to cut this short, but I hope this weekend finds you all well and looking to the Lord!

 

[moderndaymicah]

Well it's now been a year and a half since moving the entire family to Southern Indiana. I got a promotion at work from minor field tech to can fix everything, at least in title, field tech. This week I noticed how great I felt after having to replace a ped (small box on the ground that hold the phone wires) to restore phone service for someone. It had been run over by a car. It was hard work and enjoyable. I had a lot of fun answering Bible questions through the week on StackExchange's biblical hermeneutics section. The kids have behaved pretty well over the week and the youngest two just made some crafts for me to enjoy while I was writing this post. This week also brought me back to activity in ToJ where I've always felt welcomed. Joining up with the minecraft chapter I've staked out a homesite, tried to get myself up to speed in equipment, and really enjoyed seeing all the builds I could on the server. Later today we're going to head to a pot luck cinco de mayo event with church friends.

 

[Kendrik]

Semi-busy week. Not as busy as last week, but the functional lack of a weekend made this week feel... off. Honestly, I can't point to a lot of highlights or low-points. Worked. Got turned down by a church's search team. Had some extended family drama. Did some mowing, some sprinkler system work, and--my favorite--more grilling. Would grill at least four times a week if I could. Had worship practice Thursday night. Went to pick up some plants and outdoor stuff today.

Red Five (one year old son) is doing well on the whole. Worried he's kinda sick again, though. He just doesn't seem to be feeling top notch. Meanwhile, Fulcrum (wife) is well but tired in no small part because of Spectre-6 (26 week-along boy on the way).

Due to the good sum of outdoor work I had to do yesterday, I had to move two hours of paid work to clock today. So back to that I get!

 

[Atown]

its been a crazy few weeks, a lot of students graduated so we've been busy saying a lot of goodbyes. The 4 year rotation is getting harder since we're getting older and we're losing more people that we've invested so much into over hte years.

We are making some better young married friends now that some of the younger people are getting married..... the people who would be my "peers" in the church are ....... boring....... which Ive mentioned before so i won't go into that too much.

Even with a baby we are volitionally up til midnight with our students and at functions and involved with the college ministry group. it was fascinating and pretty encouraging, our college pastor's wife even admitted that they struggle doing the "young family/ community" out reach and she realized that when they had a new family over after church recently and it was difficult to relate/talk to "peers." just one of those really encouraging moments when you realize your pastors are humans too XD

Overall, business is good/sh . having a few people try working with me in the office so we'll see. Had 1 goof-up already where the clerical assistant sent a document as an attachment, instead of copying and pasting the inside of the document into the bulk email XD.

So im getting pushed to grow as a manager, so we'll see.

 

[Tek7]

This week also brought me back to activity in ToJ where I've always felt welcomed. Joining up with the minecraft chapter I've staked out a homesite, tried to get myself up to speed in equipment, and really enjoyed seeing all the builds I could on the server.

Huzzah! Welcome back, @moderndaymicah! I'm always encouraged to read and hear about folks who return to ToJ and find a place waiting for them. Tribe of Judah will turn 19 in a week and so much has changed in that time, but I've learned to view ToJ as a connecting point for people who love the Lord and who enjoy games.

 

[naijaboy]

Wow 19! All Glory to God.

 

[Tek7]

Work picked up about midway through the week, but still manageable. Dreading when multiple projects are un-frozen and we inevitably get hit with unrealistic deadlines from other teams. Oy. Got through about 2 hours of training on IT security. Still a long way off from meeting my annual training requirement before the end of June. :|

Only one and a half days left in the school year for my older child! I'm looking forward to summer break because it means I don't have to get up as early on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Plus maybe we can go have some fun this summer (since we're not planning to go on an actual vacation).

Wednesday night church for the older child is also out for the summer. Our church is fantastic, but I can't help but be grateful for our kids to just relax on Wednesday nights. We've been watching What's In The Bible With Buck Denver. The kids love it and it gives a great overview of the Bible. It goes through every book in the Bible (yes, even Job, Song of Solomon, and Revelation) and does a great job explaining how it all ties together.

As I mentioned in the Now Playing thread, I've been scratching the platformer itch with Chibi Robo: Zip Lash on the 3DS. The game feels like a tribute to the Castlevania series but with cutesy graphics instead of the nightmare fuel that occupies modern Castlevania entries. And that's high praise coming from someone who can never get enough of Metroidvania games. (Zip Lash is more or less linear, but I'm 100% okay with that right now.) I feel like no matter how old I get, I'll always enjoy a good platformer.

 

[Tek7@Work]

In recent years, my main focus has been on building a publishing start-up to offer apprenticeship programs for disabled persons wanting to work in digital media. That work helped get me a scholarship from Google for a Mobile Development program that I'm going through now, and then I got on board with Nintendo as an authorized 3DS developer, so I'm doing a lot of upstream-swimming type work trying to improve mobile gaming and services to better accommodate underserved usability and lifestyle needs, which might sound somewhat glamorous on the surface but the underlying reality is more like several-month-long stretches of depressing isolation working on and financing things myself punctuated by occasional rounds of intense argument with influential outside interests who have a strong attachment to keeping status quo.

@Firedove I've been meaning to ask: Would you mind elaborating on the projects you mentioned in the post quoted above?

The type of work you mentioned sounds very interesting and I'd love to hear more.

 

[Krissa Lox]

@Firedove I've been meaning to ask: Would you mind elaborating on the projects you mentioned in the post quoted above?

The type of work you mentioned sounds very interesting and I'd love to hear more.

Well this is me now. I didn't intentionally disappear after posting, but I was locked out of my account after trying to change the email address and using the contact form to let someone know didn't seem to work either. But that's ok, this is the handle I use now for most of my gaming so I'd just as soon be using it here, too, for consistency's sake if that's okay.

But I'm very tired right now and not at my most coherent (my son graduates high school in a week and a half so there's been lots of extra busy-ness surrounding that, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing to be present for so I'm not going to complain), so I'll return to this shortly when I can give a more substantial response.

 

[Krissa Lox]

To get back to the question, I guess the most succinct way to put it is that I've remained self-employed, assigning myself the title of media developer for special needs and then made it a full-time job to keep pursuing that focus as the Lord leads.

My primary interest is still in meaningful game development, but I realized in the bigger picture of things that more good can be done more securely and efficiently by building a publishing company which can include a gaming subdivision than by specializing in game development alone.

The main challenges of the past few years have been in remaining faithful in self-financing skill-building and R&D without an outside job to fall back on, but that struggle is finally starting to pay off now in having built up enough track record to be able to do more influential networking to get bigger things accomplished than I can do on my own.

I have a strong interest in developing for the Nintendo 3DS as I've found its form factor to have significant advantages for people with disabilities, but I'm also doing a lot with website and book publishing, too, mostly for mobile markets because that's where I see the most under-served needs combined with the most impactful potential. My goal isn't to make lots of money for its own sake, which tends to put me out of favor with a lot of the established business community I come into contact with, but to create a sustainable model of public service that invests in people rather than treating them as resources to be milked or enemies to be contended against.

At the moment, I just have clearance to make games for the 3DS, not yet apps - otherwise my top priority would be getting a good e-reader into its catalog - but if I perform well enough there then in time I might be able to solicit for the ability to branch into other things like apps or maybe even the Switch. But I certainly have no problem with being able to *just* make games for now since there's a lot of potential for awesome things that can be done with it that have gone inexplicably unexploited over the years. Plus I've now got access to its browser specs as well, so I can also work on free web-based apps for it too, which is probably where my improved e-reading ambitions will be routed to instead for the time being.

 

[Tek7]

Well this is me now. I didn't intentionally disappear after posting, but I was locked out of my account after trying to change the email address and using the contact form to let someone know didn't seem to work either. But that's ok, this is the handle I use now for most of my gaming so I'd just as soon be using it here, too, for consistency's sake if that's okay.

I don't remember receiving any messages, but that only means I need to go back and look at how we have our contact form configured (if it was ever properly configured at all since the transition from vBulletin to XenForo). Sorry about that!

If you'd like, I can merge your 2 accounts for the sake of simplicity.

To get back to the question, I guess the most succinct way to put it is that I've remained self-employed, assigning myself the title of media developer for special needs and then made it a full-time job to keep pursuing that focus as the Lord leads.

My primary interest is still in meaningful game development, but I realized in the bigger picture of things that more good can be done more securely and efficiently by building a publishing company which can include a gaming subdivision than by specializing in game development alone.

The main challenges of the past few years have been in remaining faithful in self-financing skill-building and R&D without an outside job to fall back on, but that struggle is finally starting to pay off now in having built up enough track record to be able to do more influential networking to get bigger things accomplished than I can do on my own.

I have a strong interest in developing for the Nintendo 3DS as I've found its form factor to have significant advantages for people with disabilities, but I'm also doing a lot with website and book publishing, too, mostly for mobile markets because that's where I see the most under-served needs combined with the most impactful potential. My goal isn't to make lots of money for its own sake, which tends to put me out of favor with a lot of the established business community I come into contact with, but to create a sustainable model of public service that invests in people rather than treating them as resources to be milked or enemies to be contended against.

At the moment, I just have clearance to make games for the 3DS, not yet apps - otherwise my top priority would be getting a good e-reader into its catalog - but if I perform well enough there then in time I might be able to solicit for the ability to branch into other things like apps or maybe even the Switch. But I certainly have no problem with being able to *just* make games for now since there's a lot of potential for awesome things that can be done with it that have gone inexplicably unexploited over the years. Plus I've now got access to its browser specs as well, so I can also work on free web-based apps for it too, which is probably where my improved e-reading ambitions will be routed to instead for the time being.

I <3 my 3DS units (a Zelda: A Link Between Worlds edition 3DS XL and plain black New 3DS XL). I try to keep up with the games industry and what I'd read strongly suggests that Nintendo will not abandon the 3DS as the big N views the 2DS and 3DS as low-price entry points for the Nintendo hardware family. The Switch is hot, but I think the 3DS still has a lot of life left in it!

Thank you for taking the time to share more details regarding your work. Like many gamers, I always daydreamed about working in the games industry, but with no relevant artistic skills (with the possible exception of writing, which I once considered employing to build a Neverwinter Nights module to apply for a job at BioWare years ago but never followed through) and a recognition that a programming job wasn't a good fit for me (I've struggled with pain issues, including sciatica, for years, so a desk job would be devastating), daydreaming was about all I did.

I applaud your tenacity and will be praying your efforts will be well-rewarded! I've said before that if I had a "do-over" for my career, I'd strongly consider a role related to prosthetic technology or other ways to help those with disabilities.

I'd love to read more about your work as updates are available!

 

[Tek7]

My dad visited Saturday a 3/4-day celebration of multiple events (2 birthdays, Mother's Day, and the end of my older daughter's school year) and I was struggling with shoulder pain for most of today, so I'm late posting, but I'm here!

Work is still relatively calm, but I and other members of my team are starting to get a little antsy since multiple projects have been on hold for weeks now. Our concern is that they'll all resume one after the other and work will go from manageable to overwhelming in short order. (It wouldn't be the first time.)

Summer break is in full swing, but @Ember needs to get the AC in her vehicle fixed. That's scheduled for Wednesday.

Speaking of heat, oh my word, where did spring go? It's not an exaggeration to say that we had less than a week of spring weather before we started seeing summer temperatures. Late winter + early summer = bad combination.

Did a wipe and reload on my phone recently. (Still rockin' the Nexus 6!) Still can't get wi-fi calling working again, but I'm getting older and it turns out I don't fixate on solving problems as aggressively as I once did (which, in this case, is a good thing; it's exceedingly rare that wi-fi calling would be relevant in my current work context).

Haven't been on Discord much this last week and I've been missing my CGA peeps, though I did get to play and chill with some Friday night game regulars, which was a blast. Here's hoping I have some opportunities this week to hop on Discord and be social!

 

[CowRocket]

Major construction on Desk 2018 has been completed. Still need to work on lighting, airflow, screen adjustments and sound.

 

[Krissa Lox]

I don't remember receiving any messages, but that only means I need to go back and look at how we have our contact form configured (if it was ever properly configured at all since the transition from vBulletin to XenForo). Sorry about that!

I've seen it happen at other XenForo sites so the problem may not have been on your end. I just wasn't being very quick in dealing with it because, as will be detailed more below, the choice of what username to go with now wasn't one I could take lightly.

If you'd like, I can merge your 2 accounts for the sake of simplicity.

Thanks for the offer, but in my case that probably wouldn't be the path of greatest simplicity in the long run. 'Krissa Lox' is a business name tied to my real identity. Retroactively labeling past posts with public information is probably not something we want to pursue.

I did put a lot of thought into whether I wanted to continue from my previous history here or break with the past by doing this, but in the end I thought I could contribute more by be able to be more detailed about my professional life these days rather than my personal life. I think everyone I interacted with before I switched to Firedove for security reasons knows who I am, but if not it's fine for that info to be shared privately. By "break with the past," I only mean with past public postings that could have unwanted legal or security consequences if pulled into contexts they were never intended for, not meaning a need or desire to break with past relationships too.

I <3 my 3DS units (a Zelda: A Link Between Worlds edition 3DS XL and plain black New 3DS XL). I try to keep up with the games industry and what I'd read strongly suggests that Nintendo will not abandon the 3DS as the big N views the 2DS and 3DS as low-price entry points for the Nintendo hardware family. The Switch is hot, but I think the 3DS still has a lot of life left in it!

That's definitely encouraging to hear other people's enthusiasm for it besides just my own. Many have a hard time seeing the potential. But Nintendo is definitely increasing its support for it rather than pulling back. They now freely provide a modded form of Unity for registered developers and have gotten the required playtesting equipment down to $300 to be more accessible to indie operations. Plus it's considered as serving different market segments than the Switch, so internally at least the two aren't seen as competing or able to be a replacement for the other.

Thank you for taking the time to share more details regarding your work. Like many gamers, I always daydreamed about working in the games industry, but with no relevant artistic skills (with the possible exception of writing, which I once considered employing to build a Neverwinter Nights module to apply for a job at BioWare years ago but never followed through) and a recognition that a programming job wasn't a good fit for me (I've struggled with pain issues, including sciatica, for years, so a desk job would be devastating), daydreaming was about all I did.

Stories like that are a large part of the motivation behind what I do. While you may not consider yourself "disabled" because you're able enough to do other worthwhile jobs instead, it was still an unnecessary disabling factor that limited your life options and kept you out of an industry you have a lot to contribute to. I'm not trying to say that in a 'you've been victimized' sense, but more as in this is a socially stupid state of affairs the tech industry has allowed itself to get into and bad things will happen if it can't find the will or means to change. Programming is not a physical task, so there's no reason why physical ergonomics should be allowed to continue being a limiting factor.

But in the meantime, have you looked at RPGmaker FES in the eStore? It's a complete development environment for the 3DS to make games and freely distribute them to other 3DS users without them needing to also own the program.

 

[Krissa Lox]

Went through a major life milestone as my son graduated from high school - yay!

Then we immediately launched into the process of moving into a new home in a small town in northeast Oregon where we can enjoy a quieter environment and cheaper cost of living. Moving is not very fun, but the results will be worth it and I finally get to have my own office/production studio to work from so that is exciting.

Work-wise most things are on hold for a bit while getting set up in the new place, but I did get to experience great episodes of frustration trying to secure new private label publishing licenses from game writers, which is a constant source of astonishment to me as there are so many people happily willing to write countless tomes of gaming content for free but then be really irrational about getting paid for it. Not that there's probably any shortage of gamers willing to write for money, but of those that do, I think very few of them put in the initial needed investment to learn how the publishing industry operates to know how to effectively sell their work and that the usual path of advancement is to go through freelance markets serving multiple indie publishers rather than holding out for nothing less than being hired on by a single company as full-time staff. And it's not just a work-your-way-up-ranks issue either -- there's genuinely a ton more money, freedom, and personal glory available in serving the indie markets, so that makes it doubly frustrating when people treat you like a lesser option just because they haven't done their homework about the economics of their industry.

Maybe I could write some kind of guide to explain the system better, but writers of other genres don't seem to have this issue so lack of knowledge may not be the actual root problem. For example, when Pokemon Go came out, there were thousands of article and ebook licenses available on the freelance markets within a week because it was a shallow enough concept that non-gaming specialists could write about it, but when it comes to stuff requiring writers with more gaming experience, in spite of spending hours per weeks writing on forums and blogs, often wtih impressive feats of logistical or numerical skill, it's virtually crickets trying to find anything buyable because game writers just seem unwilling or unable to figure out how the market works.

But meh, I can do much of the writing myself if I need to so it's not a crippling problem. I just prefer to outsource it since it's not the most enjoyable or productive of tasks for me and I know there are people much more skilled and passionate about it than I am so it seems win-win to support them when I can, but I'm still bootstrapping this venture so I can't afford to be anyone's sole source of income yet if they don't want to put their work out through the common marketplace.

On a happier note, I've gone back to playing Shroud of the Avatar again. I was an early backer and made a good deal of money there before (it's an RMT-based economy) but cashed out most of my holdings a few months ago for startup money to fund other things of greater importance. Now I am seeing how quickly I can get back into operation again by just character skills and labor without all my uber founders' advantage stuff.

It's good to be gaming for money again. I've missed it a lot since Sony and Livegamer shut their RMT service down. (I did try Entropia Universe for a while, but shooting things wasn't as much fun as sword-and-sorcery style gameplay.) But it won't be a full-time job anymore like it used to be since I've leveled up enough in real-life in the meantime to have more profitable things to be doing with my workday.

 

[Tek7@Work]

How is it already Thursday?!

As mentioned elsewhere, last week was my and @Ember's clean-cation. The week was very productive, thanks in large part to my dad driving down for 2 days (Tuesday and Thursday) to help us. There's still a lot of work left to do, but we cleared through a lot--A LOT--of clutter and I'm definitely feeling better about the house than when we started.

My daughters had their dance recital on Saturday. (The dress rehearsal was Friday night.) This was my older daughter's third recital (third, right, @Ember?) and my younger daughter's first. They did great! /cheer

I came back to work on Monday and was glad to discover I didn't have as many new tickets in my queue as I expected. I've been steadily (though slowly) getting that number down throughout the week.

I hope you all are doing well this week!

 

[Tek7@Work]

Went through a major life milestone as my son graduated from high school - yay!

Congratulations to you and your son! Huzzah!

Then we immediately launched into the process of moving into a new home in a small town in northeast Oregon where we can enjoy a quieter environment and cheaper cost of living. Moving is not very fun, but the results will be worth it and I finally get to have my own office/production studio to work from so that is exciting.

Having one's own office is wonderful. I gave mine up when our second child was born. It was worth it, of course, but maaan I miss my office some days.

 

[Krissa Lox]

This week was mostly continuing to settle in and scout out the local resources. Being in a small town is definitely a very big change of pace and lifestyle from living in the San Francisco area, but it's just a short trip from here to Tri-Cities Washington, so there's still big city stuff around if we need it.

Conducted some further interviews to get more in-depth information about why the game writing offers were lacking in interest and found that the offers themselves weren't unappealing nor being compared to other, better options available, but that people are so intimidated by bad or difficult-to-understand financial policies encountered in other areas of life that they don't feel safe in pursuing anything other than "traditional" employment, effectively prioritizing employers they can outsource financial complexity to over those who might offer more freedom or profitability but leave the worker responsible for managing their own financial service needs.

This saddens me, but rather than fighting against it I think I will shelve building a gaming site for now and reinforce existing efforts with some financial literacy and home economics publications I've already got in the pipeline.

 

[Kendrik]

We pass through Tri-Cities any time we go from Spokane area to Portland area to see family. Welcome to the PNW.

It's no longer F/Sa, but my F/Sa was a bit ridiculous this week.

Ours weekend started with a trip down gravel roads an hour and a half away to the in-laws' on Friday. A short while after getting there, my wife ("Fulcrum") went to get into their pool, stepped into an uncovered filter hole (about a foot in diameter and two feet deep--I'm still upset they didn't have the stupid thing covered, one year old "Red Five" could have easily stepped in it too), and thought she broke her leg. We went in our first ambulance ride to the ER, half an hour or more away. Between baby fears and the reality that I couldn't get her into our car in her then state, it was the better move than not going. No break in leg or arm (though both still hurt and are mostly unusable for the moment), no concussion, and unborn son (32 weeks along, "Spectre-6") is just fine. She caught herself enough to protect him.

Back to their place, got her to sorta sleep for the night. Then we still went, with aid of wheel chair, to their tiny town's parade and Farm Fest. It was pretty much terrible. Across the board. Back to their farm, Red Fivetook a nap, then we came back. I had to drive back on all them gravel roads, which is fine by me except Fulcrum is much better at driving than passenger-ing, so she does most of it. She's a stressful passenger no matter what I do. Haha

Finally home. Fulcrum declared the unfortunate practicality that while she's injured as such, I'm functioning as a single parent. Not really true, of course, but hooboy. The impact is real and has been felt, especially at Walmart yesterday. (Then, today, had to go back to Walmart for a couple things that didn't make the list... then to pick up checks for upcoming farmer's markets from WIC.)

Icing on the cake this morning: I miscalculated when transferring from savings in anticipation of this weekend (due to Things and Circumstance, my pay timeline got messed up since I'm a contractor and no one was there to push the "transfer money" button), much less prepared for surprises and corresponding surprise expenses, and woke up to an email about being $11 overdrawn. First time in years, and we're fine, but I hate that because I try to be really good with money to keep a clean financial track record. Haha

One bright side from the weekend: My brother in law, a near-pro golfer (wins money in area tournaments; should be able to get into the senior open when he hits age requirement), sent a full set of Darn Nice Clubs up with his wife when she came to the farm for this event. Made a tasty little drink and finally got to swing them a bit in the yard with some wiffle balls last night. They feel real nice. Can't wait to go put them to use once Fulcrum is recovered enough for me to be able to leave Red Five with her after putting him to bed. (Because of arm and leg, she couldn't get him out of bed right now without further strain and worsening her injury should he wake up badly while I'd be gone.)

So, that's a weekend! Just got Red Five down for nap so I can try to cram some work hours in. Thank God for the ability to work from home and when I want, especially when something like this happens.

 

[Krissa Lox]

We pass through Tri-Cities any time we go from Spokane area to Portland area to see family. Welcome to the PNW.

It's no longer F/Sa, but my F/Sa was a bit ridiculous this week.

Ours weekend started with a trip down gravel roads an hour and a half away to the in-laws' on Friday. A short while after getting there, my wife ("Fulcrum") went to get into their pool, stepped into an uncovered filter hole (about a foot in diameter and two feet deep--I'm still upset they didn't have the stupid thing covered, one year old "Red Five" could have easily stepped in it too), and thought she broke her leg. We went in our first ambulance ride to the ER, half an hour or more away. Between baby fears and the reality that I couldn't get her into our car in her then state, it was the better move than not going. No break in leg or arm (though both still hurt and are mostly unusable for the moment), no concussion, and unborn son (32 weeks along, "Spectre-6") is just fine. She caught herself enough to protect him.

Back to their place, got her to sorta sleep for the night. Then we still went, with aid of wheel chair, to their tiny town's parade and Farm Fest. It was pretty much terrible. Across the board. Back to their farm, Red Fivetook a nap, then we came back. I had to drive back on all them gravel roads, which is fine by me except Fulcrum is much better at driving than passenger-ing, so she does most of it. She's a stressful passenger no matter what I do. Haha

Finally home. Fulcrum declared the unfortunate practicality that while she's injured as such, I'm functioning as a single parent. Not really true, of course, but hooboy. The impact is real and has been felt, especially at Walmart yesterday. (Then, today, had to go back to Walmart for a couple things that didn't make the list... then to pick up checks for upcoming farmer's markets from WIC.)

Icing on the cake this morning: I miscalculated when transferring from savings in anticipation of this weekend (due to Things and Circumstance, my pay timeline got messed up since I'm a contractor and no one was there to push the "transfer money" button), much less prepared for surprises and corresponding surprise expenses, and woke up to an email about being $11 overdrawn. First time in years, and we're fine, but I hate that because I try to be really good with money to keep a clean financial track record. Haha

One bright side from the weekend: My brother in law, a near-pro golfer (wins money in area tournaments; should be able to get into the senior open when he hits age requirement), sent a full set of Darn Nice Clubs up with his wife when she came to the farm for this event. Made a tasty little drink and finally got to swing them a bit in the yard with some wiffle balls last night. They feel real nice. Can't wait to go put them to use once Fulcrum is recovered enough for me to be able to leave Red Five with her after putting him to bed. (Because of arm and leg, she couldn't get him out of bed right now without further strain and worsening her injury should he wake up badly while I'd be gone.)

So, that's a weekend! Just got Red Five down for nap so I can try to cram some work hours in. Thank God for the ability to work from home and when I want, especially when something like this happens.

Ouch - I am so sorry for you and your wife to have to go through such a painful weekend, and will pray for a speedy recovery.

I'd also be interested to hear about what you're doing for work these days, but I realize that's a personal matter so don't feel pressured to answer unless you really want to.