Scott's Weblog

New Job

dendiman — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:05:17 +0000

Haven’t posted for a while, started my new job, the bike got fixed and pranged again. I’m working about 30 minutes from home and the ride to work is quite dangerous, without dodging traffic it’s about 45 minutes. There’s a new road opening up in April, just will have to hold out till then.

Ollie’s doing well, he’s started daycare and mum has gone back to work. Mum’s pretty happy with how he’s going at daycare, she was pretty selective about the daycare center and it’s working out well. They have a small playpen/fence around him to stop the other kids from trampling him, but otherwise I think he’s receiving more stimulation than we could offer. He’s already come down with a cold, but he only received his hooping cough immunisation a few days ago so it’s likely that’s what he has (it’s not serious, just snuffly). I think the trade of being a little sick for being more mentally advanced is a worthwhile trade, and he should be healthier for it later.

I think I’ve stopped looking up information on Down Syndrome, I subscribe to the “Staircase Disorder” theory – you can push 20 people down the same set of stairs and you’re going to come out with 20 different injuries. I think the affect of Down Syndrome is somewhat similar, and I don’t think reading is really going to help much, I think I’ve absorbed as much as I’m going to absorb.

We went to a Down Syndrome christmas party at the local Down Syndrome Association the other day, and there was a young baby girl there that seem quite advanced mentally, but physically she looked no older than Ollie. She was 11 months old and Ollie was 4 months old. The party was interesting, but very boring for parents, we couldn’t wait to get out of there, but the children were having a wonderful time. The jungle gym playroom was kind of like – open the door, throw a kid in, close the door before anything flies out. We did meet some nice people, but as our children aren’t the same age, they weren’t really socially-compatible which is probably what we’re hoping for the most.

Coping with Challenges

dendiman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:27:44 +0000

I have a number of challenges to deal with at the moment.

A lady backed into me in a carpark and caused thousands of dollars of damage to my motorbike. She was clearly at fault but I don’t have insurance and I’m worried that her insurance company is going to try and squirm out of it. It’s my primary form of transport, now I have to drive my 4WD to work which is costing heaps in fuel.
I have also been offered a new job (normally you think that would be a positive experience), but I haven’t seen the offer on paper yet. It’s for government though, and they take ages with the paperwork. Trying to be thoughtful to my manager, I explained the situation and of course asked him to keep it confidential – I was telling him so he could manage his risks. He took it upon himself to tell the company directors, and now they’ve advertised my role. I haven’t even quit yet, what if it fizzes? I thought better of telling him and I still did, so really it’s a lesson learnt I guess.

Do I feel more depressed about these things than I would have if they happened a few years ago?

I bumped into this at another site:

“we worry about the future as you do with any child and my heart still breaks a litle every day, especially at the moment as one of my close friends has just given birth to a big healthy boy (9lb 15oz)and a really weird part of me almost wished he’d have ds too so i wouldn’t feel left out (is that normal ?) i still ask “why me?” even though i know it’s pointless as there are no answers.”

So when does your heart stop breaking?

Oliver likes Apple

dendiman — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:28:35 +0000

Oliver’s 4 months old he’s starting the drooling and crying that comes with teething. We tried him out on Milk Arrowroot biscuits (the blandest biscuits known to man) and he will quite happily gum away half a biscuit and make a delightful mess all over his face for mum to clean up. He really seems to enjoy it so we decided to try him on some basic solid foods. We’ve started with mashed up soggy weetbix which I think he begrudgingly swallows because we keep sticking it in his mouth. Yesterday my wife stewed up some pink lady apples she bought from the markets, his reaction was completely unexpected. Everything’s well and good while you’re feeding him, just don’t stop. Ollie will finish off a huge bowl and go into a full crying frenzy when there’s no more. The verdict is in, Ollie *loves* apple.

Hypothyroidism confirmed

dendiman — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:07:30 +0000

So Oliver has been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. The news wasn’t a complete shock as we knew his levels were down a couple of months ago, but it still isn’t something you take enjoyment from hearing. A flurry of google-ing and I’m a bit more impartial. The consensus seems to be that hypothyroidism is going to affect most children with down syndrome, and the effects are somewhat sinister, mainly focusing around stunting their development. The cause is pretty simple, the thyroid doesn’t fully develop during pregnancy so it doesn’t produce enough of the thyroid hormone. It’s easily treated with a daily tablet to supplement the hormone.

I’ve read several blogs from parents who have noticed a dramatic improvement in their children after beginning the thyroid treatment, so it make me a little curious how often it just wasn’t diagnosed, and how much potential those children have lost.

Meeting other Parents of Disabled Children

dendiman — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:01:03 +0000

So I’m a semi-professional photographer, I do weddings etc outside of my normal hours. I was shooting a wedding on the weekend and an 18 year old girl was part of the bridal party at this wedding. I spoke to the bride and she promptly introduced me to her parents. It was a really positive experience, the young woman with down syndrome explained that she enjoyed school and she now works 3 days a week (2 cleaning and 1 office admin). What struck me the most was that 18 her personality was still quite child like. I couldn’t help myself, Oliver snores already so I asked her infront of everyone, “do you snore?”, and it was a resounding chorus of yes with alot of laughs. I snore myself so I don’t think poor Ollie had much of a chance.

Her parents were fantastic though, they explained that she’d been through the public school system and had spent alot of time in the Special Education Unit at her school, but still mainstreamed all the way through till year 12. She was indulging in a glass of champagne to celebrate the wedding, which I have to admint, I found amusing.

Yesterday we had Oliver’s “developmental planning” session with Disability Services. It didn’t highlight a great deal, just to keep the physio up. Oliver enjoys pulling, so he’ll hold onto my index fingers and I’ll lift him forward and backwards. He enjoys standing as well, so I try and give him the opportunity to stand as much as I can. Tickling makes a huge part of his physio, he does a great Jackie Chan impersonation when he’s lying on his back and you tickle him, legs and arms go everywhere.

At the developmental planning session we met a lady with a 4 year old girl with Autism. The young girl was certainly challenging to her mother during the session, and while I guess we carry different burdens, we did seem to share something.

Bad Advice on Centrelink’s Carer’s Allowance

dendiman — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:52:13 +0000

When we were in the hospital and still coming to grips with down syndrome, a social worker came to see us. She claimed to also work for centrelink and one of the things she said is that we wouldn’t be eligible for Carer’s Allowance until much later, we’d have to meet a social worker for assesment and prove that we needed it. A couple of months later we met another down’s mother of a 6 month old baby, she said “oh no no… we have carer’s allowance” and it immediately raised eyebrows. We followed it up with Centrelink, filled out the forms, and it wasn’t a problem. We needed to get a qualified professional to sign a form saying he had down syndrome, the guys from disability services queensland signed it for us during one of the mother’s groups, we didn’t even have to pay for a consultation with a GP. The forms went straight through and they back paid us to his birth, Centrelink didn’t give us a hard time in any way at all, if anything they were positive and supportive.

Here’s the catch… centrelink only backpays up to 12 weeks. We lodged the form when Oliver was around 11 weeks. Oliver was born in late may, Centrelink pays a $1000 payment once a year to all people receiving Carer’s allowance on June 1st. If we listened to the social worker we would have missed the payment and missed out on god knows how long worth of carer’s payments.

New babies

dendiman — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:14:43 +0000

On tuesday morning a friend of ours gave birth to a baby boy. Something that we’d normally be extremely happy about brought us both tumbling down. My immediate reaction to the news wasn’t a happy thing, I felt a deep sorrow and I didn’t immediately break down or anything like that, just a really sad feeling about our circumstances. The wierd thing is that as they’re some of my closest friend I was really happy everything went well for them, but a part of me longed for them to have a child with downs, not because I would ever wish that on them, but because then we wouldn’t feel so alone.

My wife looked really depressed as well, and I said to her, “are you sad about the same thing I’m sad about?”, and when she said yes we both just broke down. I took the day off work and we had a family day, we went out and did some shopping and that afternoon/night we watched some DVD’s and knocked off a couple of bottles of wine. It really did help both of us to spend that time together.

Internet Explorer – Can they get it more wrong?

dendiman — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:47:52 +0000

I don’t think anyone that’s *not* a web developer understands just how much of a blight on the internet IE is. I develop with Firefox, and I use the uber awesome “web developer toolbar”, and “html validator” extensions (along with “DOM inspector” and “adblock plus”). They’re both incredibly valuable extensions in firefox, infact I don’t know any quality web developers that don’t use them. Firefox has a great javascript debugger, it’ll give you specific errors and you can fix specific problems, if you’re writing an Ajax component or something a little more complicated, IE just doesn’t cut the mustard. I spent all day putting together some simple pre-fill forms, you know the type where you select an option from a drop down menu and it gives you different layers based on your selection (eg. pick Australia and you get an Australian address formatted form, pick US and you get a US address formatted form). IE doesn’t support the standards I’ve used to develop with… the whole thing has to be rebuilt with nasty hacks.

IE forces developers to hack hack hack. It’s so frustrating! CSS support is even worse, it’s hacks on hacks on hacks. It’s always a hack to support different versions of IE. I read a bunch of Microsoft marketing about the slow evolution of IE being about not breaking the internet. I hate to be the one to point it out, but it’s IE breaking the internet! The internet and web standards are slowly evolving, IE is not.

I eventually got frustrated enough that I “standardised” Firefox as our internal web browser, much to the joy of our developers. It didn’t work, there are still muppets out in userspace using IE. To block them you have to have an IT department on the ball with having Firefox deployed, and that we do not have. So back to developing for IE.

Windows 7 – woopdee doo

dendiman — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:36:17 +0000

Noticing all the fanfare coming out for Windows 7, and I’m noticing a common theme. Microsoft is finally starting to provide the user experience that’s been available on Mac (and even Ubuntu!) for years.

Why are all the Microsoft bunnies carying on like this is the most awesome tech eva? Windows 7 isn’t going to run all this candy and junk over citrix and remote connections so again, what’s the relevance to business? Business is just going to switch it all off, and it’ll be the same experience as XP. But then Microsoft will throw in some “only in Win7 group policy” and slowly the world will upgrade.

They’re going to the new user-land approach… kernel isolated from the user space. Again, whoopdee doo, Mac and Linux have been doing this for years. The difference is Microsoft is only just starting to get it right now, and even then their kernel isn’t secure. When you build a house out of poo, at the end of construction it’s still just a big pile of poo.

Disable automatic restarts after windows updates

dendiman — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:20:17 +0000

F#ck microsoft, no really, f#ck microsoft. Twice in the last week my machine at home has downloaded updates and automatically kicked itself in the guts. Twice in the last week I’ve lost remote access to my home machine because windows hangs when it tries to reboot. Twice in the last week I’ve had downloads queued up at night because my ISP has on and off peak quota, and twice it’s downloaded nothing because the machine’s hung.

I ask you honestly, is this policy more about protecting the user or protecting Microsoft?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555444