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After about a year and a half of research, I've come to a few conclusions about the sleep habits of infant mammals. Specifically, they have an innate ability to coordinate the duration of their own sleep cycles with ambient phenomenon, specifically:- The REM cycle of the typical adult (just ...
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I recently received this email forward, and figured plajorized content was better than no new content! Some of these remind me of Aaron Karo's Ruminations.- I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
- The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This re...
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I understand that women wear shoes for a variety of reasons. The obligatory foot protection/warmth aside, they can add to an outfit. There are, however, a number of mistakes that women make when choosing footwear. I've taken the time to create the following graphic to assist the fairer sex in the...
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Here's a few things you should not be able to do on Facebook:- Caption a photo of you and your girl friends as "my beautiful ladies" when they're all beat.
- Post the phrases "It's about time!" or "Finally!" to the wall ...
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As you may know, we've had our condo on the market for a couple months. During that time, I think we've either been exposed to the rudest real estate agents in the region or been given a glimpse at the sad state of agents in today's market.
We...
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After years working for private and public sector clients, I've learned something about the efficacy of all meetings. The productivity of any meeting is inversely proportional to the number of times the phrase "work smarter, not harder" is shown on a slide during said meeting. If you happen...
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It was late one evening and I was downloading a Microsoft service pack for Windows 2000. (This was back before the auto-update things did this all for you...) The 50+MB download was progressing steadily, albeit slowly, so I decided to head to b...
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I know it's been a while -- sorry about that! We're so busy having fun and watching Ricky grow, that the website has sort-of fallen by the wayside. There have been a couple of fun milestones recently, though.
First of all, last Wednesday (May 21st), Ricky laughed! Granted, there wasn't a...
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I have this habit. Whenever I’m introduced to someone whose last name is Anderson, my mind replays the line from The Matrix where one of the Agent Smiths says “Hello, Mr. Anderson” in that hollow drone-like voic...
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As I mentioned earlier, we were able to take Ricky home March 21st. So to say the least, we've been a little pre-occupied. I hope that partially explains the lack of updates recently.
Little Ricky, or Ivy as we're trying to occasionally call him, is doing absolutely great. He's still on ...
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We've just gotten word from the nurses. Our baby boy is finally off the "brady-watch." Kristin's already at the hospital and I'm leaving work shortly to meet her. As soon as the doctors make their next rounds, we expect Ricky to officially be allowed to come home. With the snow coming today and ...
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Ricky's still doing well and might be coming home this week! His appetite has really improved: he’s finishing all of his bottles without falling asleep, he actually starts "rooting" for his bottle well before his meals, an...
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Ricky's still gaining strength and making progress. This waiting game is the most difficult part. There's no real date when the doctors have promised he'll be able to come home. When we impatiently ask, their answer is always "when he's strong enough." What they means is that he's strong enough ...
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Ricky's doing really great! He's still comfortably breathing room air on his own. They've increased his feedings to 35ml (just over an ounce) every three hours. Once he can handle 38ml (any minute now...), they'll let him decide how much he needs to eat! He still gets really sleepy during feedin...
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All in all, Ricky continues to take steps closer to coming home. Even after being removed from the overhead lights yesterday, his bilirubin levels didn't noticeably increase today, so they're going to continue to just use the blanket. His appetite has increased to 25ml of breastmilk per every thre...
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The doctors decided to take him completely off the breathing tubes, which is fantastic! He’s breathing in normal room air on his own and maintaining his oxygen levels wonderfully. His Bilirubin levels are reducing, so they’ve taken him out from ...
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The NICU at Northwestern has been getting a lot of traffic recently. Little Ricky is basking in the attention and has really been improving and getting stronger throughout these past couple days. They’ve lowered his air pressure from four to ...
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As of 6:08a this morning, we are now the proud parents of a 4lb 7oz healthy baby boy! Mother and son are doing great. We're naming him after the daddy: Richard Le Roy Conklin IV (aka 'Ricky).
Because of his low weight and slightly under-mature lung-capacity, they're holding him in the int...
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In 1967, D.C. passed a gun ban very similar to our own (no handguns, rifles must be stored unloaded, etc.) A security guard who protects federal employees was disturbed by the fact that he could possess a gun during the day (because it was justified in defense of govt. employees) but could not posse...
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An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.
Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
...
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Riding the CTA bus to work this morning, I came to a conclusion that many of my fellow travelers probably already knew. For the benefit of those not familiar with Chicago's public transportation options, allow me to explain: there are two classes of people on the CTA busses and trains.
The...
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I've decided to test out a new theory. My theory states that simply maintaining an active gym membership is sufficient to stay in shape; the actual "working out" is completely unnecessary. For at least two solid months, I've subjected myself to this torture. I've painstakingly avoided going to th...
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Let me start off by saying that if you use speakerphone at work, your co-workers hate you. You can defend yourself by saying you only use it to dial, and then quickly pick up the receiver. You may only use it for listening to voicemails (when the other party supposedly doesn't care that you're using...
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I know. There are about a million examples of how to use email politely in the workplace. I'm going to take this one-step further and include suggestions (read: complaints) about items that affect personal use, as well.- Vague Subjects
Use a subject that means something...
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No, that's not peers as in those at roughly your professional level. I mean people who urinate sloppily.
Gentlemen, if you can’t control the direction of your flow, at least have the decency to constrain yourself to the sit-down stalls. Seriously, sit when you pee. Leave the urina...
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I don't want anymore porn stars as MySpace friends. I don't want any more recruiters as LinkedIn contacts.
My MySpace "top 8" only contains people I knew in real life. I'm not on there looking to win a friend-gathering contest -- I enjoy keepin...
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I love it when banquet planners or catering salespeople use fancy words to describe food with which we're already familiar. For the benefit of society, I've compiled a quick translation guide. Feel free to bring this along to friends' weddings. ...
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For future reference, women do not mind if you ask what they do for a living. (she was a librarian) They still don't mind if you ask what kind of background she has in that field. They apparently do mind when you laugh at their masters degree in Librarian Sciences.
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Two things really piss me off about this advertising campaign and since you're on my website, you get to hear about them both.
First, when Apple dominates the MP3 player market, their consumers hardly have the right to claim they're independent thinkers by choosing the iPod. Apple's advert...
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Over the course of my consulting career, I've had numerous clients with a wide variety of internet usage policies and security needs. Most make attempts to protect their employees from the "big bad internet" and all the hackers/viruses it entails. ...
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I'm fairly sure some customer service representatives are just about as good as your average Magic 8-Ball. Take, as an example, my recent dealings with representatives of DataPilot.com, a third-party who makes software to sync y...
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Have you ever researched which mobile phone to buy? No, I don't mean just asking the kid behind the counter which one has the best sounding ringtones... I'm sure I'm not the only dork who checks out bulletin boards, discussion groups, and manufacturer websites before finally heading into the store...
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There, I said it. I can't stand your blue "Q" mocking me from my own Windows task tray. Why can’t you be more like Macromedia's Flash? Browser plug-ins should be just that -- browser plug-ins. I don't need a 24x7 reminder that I had to sink down and install you j...
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I know, I'm a little behind the times. My dad just recently showed me a puzzle that's been gaining popularity recent: Sudoku. If you know how the puzzles work, you're probably already addicted. If you haven't yet been exposed, I c...
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I'm not sure if you've had much experience with them, but there are usually limo drivers at O'Hare down near the baggage claim area. They're between fares and could use the extra cash, so they try to collect passengers. It's not technically legal for them to solicit rides within the airport, but t...
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When I was in high school, I did what everyone else my age was doing: I tried gel deodorant. No, I didn't snort its dried flakes, inject said gel intravenously, use it to sneak underage into bars, or otherwise participate in delinquent activities. I purchased a gel-stick as a part of my normal sch...
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I was thinking about this the other day. When I die from over-consumption of bacon and leave Kristin to live her remaining lives alone (at least let me have my delusions…) she would be referred to as a "widow." So far, this makes sense to me.
Widow (w‹d,“)
&nb...
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I started putting together a website for our class reunion. (Tip: Keep Saturday, September 24th open...) We're planning on using a yahoo groups website, but it just didn't look "professional" enough. Hopefully, I'll be able to add features to the ...
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I came across some interesting links today. Nothing really worthy of permanent posting on the links page, but good none-the-less: a humourously annotated ...
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For New Years Eve, We had Tony&Michelle, Chris&Lisa, and Tom&Jen over for a few drinks. We walked over to a brazilian steak house, Fogo De Chao for an excellent meat-lovers ...
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Hello everyone! Merry Christmas! Kristin and I had a wonderful time in Tinley with our families (Conklins, ...
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This past Saturday, we went to Terri's house to play some board games. Good times - especially for Cicero when he found T's baby oil. Long story... With the shortened work-week ...
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Kristin and I just got back on a vacation in Switzerland. She was there for two weeks of training and I joined her for the last week to take advantage of her company-paid hotel room. We had a great time! Pictures from each day, along with a brief itinerary of what we did, are available onl...
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Hey guys,
I've been spending a lot of time recently working on the security for this website. I'd say it's 90% done. One cool thing I did was get it completely integrated with my Windows © Active Directory, so maintaining users is fast and easy. Next, I'll be working on allowing you g...
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Can you see the new inline ads? As you navigate around our website, you may see some yellow highlighting around specific words. If you hover your mouse above them, you'll see a little ad. Honestly, I'm not getting paid anything for them - I just wanted to see how difficult they would be to create...
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Guess what - I started posting actual content!
I just added a few of my recent programs to the website. Most of them were written for fun or to prove a point, but I chose to post the ones that had the most real-world usefulness, so please check them out in the Coding section. Now you...
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I've got a lot more of the behind-the-scenes work done on the user and security maintenance pages. Man, I wish everyone were an administrator so I could show it all off! Next up: working on the login page, so it actually loads all your permissions. Once that's done, I can really start handing out...
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Some major re-workings to the pictures page. It now finally sorts in reverse chronological order - so all of the most recent pictures are at the top of the page. Also, with the new format, you can keep the list of thumbnails visible while you zoom-in. If you're using an browser that doesn'...
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As you can tell, I've developed some new "themes" for the website. The look-and-feel of the site will probably change on a somewhat regular basis. Maybe sometime in the future, you'll be able to customize your experience and choose the theme you like best. Until then, enjoy the frequent...
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OK, it's been a awhile with seemingly little progress, but I added the scrolley messages in the top right corner, some reusable form validation, and got a lot of work done on some of the behind-the-scenes user maintenance pages. Sorry, you can't see those. Hopefully, I'll start sending out usernam...
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I finally got around to making the Links page. It's a seemingly small step forward, but it means a world for the back-end progression of the site. Security is set up for the Anonymous users group (thats you!), all on/off site links are logged, and the site is still completely data-driven. Come ba...
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Hey guys,
I made some changes to our website. There isn't much more content... yet! For now, you'll just have to settle for the new color theme on the front page. More changes are on the way, so be patient.
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Copyright Notice
The entire contents of this website are protected under international copyright law.
The source of this content was: http://www.rickandkristin.com
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