Thursday last week just as Theresa was getting ready to leave for class, she began to wince in pain - serious pain - from her upper abdomen.  After the fifth time in ten minutes with the pain increasing, we rushed out the door for the hospital.

The world has a cruel sense of humor & it was in prime form.  Six PM in Los Angeles means that highway is a synonym for parking lot.  As such we took the streets & managed to literally hit every red light from our apartment to St. Joseph’s.

With no idea what was wrong nor any idea how long we would be there, we called Brandi to come get JJ & take him back to the apartment.  Reliable as she always is, Brandi  dropped everything, arrived faster than lightening & whisked JJ away so I could concentrate on Theresa.

Theresa’s room, or rather cubicle, (is there a word for the hospital rooms which are not really rooms, but 3 sided spaces with a curtain for “privacy”?) had a television with cable which was great, but the channel up button did not work & surfing through 60 channels in a unilateral direction becomes a bit tedious especially when you realize you just passed the channel you wanted to watch.  Most of the evening passed with me making jokes about how I am going to bag Angelina Jolie if Theresa dies, watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network & watching one of the greatest movies ever, Under Siege (though the good parts were edited out for television - no sarcasm there - I love that movie).  During the periods when Theresa was being tested or sleeping, I spent the entire life of my cell phone’s battery playing Inca Quest.

Long story short….4 hours after arriving, an ultrasound showed no soft tissue problems meaning it was either a broken rib or a contusion (which I have now learned is really hospital-ese for “mysterious unknown pain someplace in the body”).  The doctor said, if we wanted to be patient they could do an x-ray to see if it was a broken rib & we would be out the door in 30 minutes.  Figuring the night was already blown, we decided to go for it.

Thirty minutes later, the x-ray technician told us he inadvertantly x-rayed Theresa’s lungs & heart instead of her ribs.  An hour later (1:45 am), we finally got the result that it was a chest contusion either from an impact or strenuous coughing.

Driving home, both exhausted & relieved, we weighed our options for dinner.  Taco Bell or Mels?  As Brandi was waiting for us to get home so she could go home herself, we opted for the Taco Bell drive-thru.

As we finally sat for dinner, I said to Theresa, “Just think of this whole thing as a creepy, emotional wrought date night.  We had a night out without JJ, watched a movie, & then got dinner.”

As most of the western world is aware, the final Harry Potter book went on sale this weekend. It broke sales records with a whopping 5,000 copies per hour being sold in the first 24 hours.

As most of my friends are aware, I am always reading a book. With the anticipation of the Potter book, I wanted to make sure I was not deeply involved in a new book when we got our copy of Deathly Hallows, so I pulled out an old favorite, Good Omens.

I think I’ve read Good Omens about a dozen times. The last time was probably more than 2-3 years ago. Not more than 20 pages into it, I was quickly reminded why this is still my favorite book of all time.

Anyone who has not read Good Omens needs to do themselves a favor & pick this book up. I promise you will laugh out loud reading it.

In the meanwhile, I am now 1/2 way through the new Potter book & enjoying it thoroughly.

The first thing that enters most anyone’s mind when the phone rings at 3am outside of “What time is it, and what is that noise?” is “I don’t want to answer this.”  Less so because they are asleep & it annoyed them, but more so because any call at that hour can only be bad news.

We got one of those calls late Saturday / early Sunday.  I picked up the phone hoping it was a wrongly dialed number from London where it was a reasonable hour to make a phonecall & heard “Can I talk to Theresa?”  I knew it could not be good.  She took the call & within seconds ran into the living room.   I followed at a slower “I need to wake up” pace.  When I got out there, Theresa looked at me without pausing in her conversation, grabbed a pen & wrote three words “Gotta go NOW!”
Theresa’s mom had an incident related to her recent diagnosis & was rushed to the emergency room.  She had lost a significant amount of blood, & the ER doctor ordered her friends to “Tell her nearest relatives to come here now.”

We were out the door in less than 30 minutes & in Visalia before 7 am.

Long story short, Louise was stabilized & they were in the process of replacing the lost blood (about 3-4 units).  We checked into a hotel a block from the hospital & got comfortable for the day.  Food & showers took a priority with naps to make up for the lost sleep occuring later in the day.

This made something very apparent to me.

I need to buy the laptop I have been considering NOW.

The advantage of working on one’s own & remotely is that you can work anywhere —- if you are set up to do so.  The disadvantage of working on one’s own & remotely is that you need to be ready to work anywhere & that you do not have a company to fall back on during these sorts of situations.
Realizing I could be up there for a week or longer, we visited Best Buy & Costco to look at our options.  A few phone calls with some buddies & my brother narrowed it to 2 systems which I could buy off the shelf.  Then all I would need to do is drive home for a day to get my external harddrive, install my software & my portable office was established.

Luckily, Louise was stabilized & doing well enough that we were able to drive home today.  However, I will not be caught off guard like this again.

My mother-in-law was recently diagnosed with cancer.  Based upon the diagnosis, it is a serious situation with a big fight ahead.  Family & friends have rallied to be there for her in whatever capacity they can, & she has set aside personal pride to accept it.

We shall be hoping for the best, but for now can only wait & see.

Once in a while a project that I am a tremendous fan of crosses my plate. I often refer to them quite simply as my passion projects.

There were a great many of these during my tenure working for Trailer Park (formerly Creative Domain (formerly Faction Creative’s web team)). Typically I was assigned to the next available project while working there, but if a passion project arose, I would ask Scott to find a way to assign me to it. Many of these projects were animated films like the Toy Story DVD site. I was practically frothing at the mouth when we won the contract for Miracle.

Recently, one of my clients was contracted for the The Bourne Ultimatum website. As a huge fan of both the Jason Bourne books and movies, I asked him to contract me for the project. He was happy to oblige me.

We have poured a lot of effort into this project, & I am pleased to announce that the main website for The Bourne Ultimatum launched yesterday. This was a fun project to work on & I am anxious to see the movie in theaters soon.

So just what have I been working on lately? Check out my portfolio now & you can find out.

This is the first update in at least eight months. It includes the last couple of projects I worked on as a full-timer at Trailer Park, but more importantly also includes a sampling of my freelance work. In addition, a few older projects have been removed.

In updating my site, it quickly became apparent how much I need to prepare a new portfolio site and get my business site up & running. The current version of my portfolio was created in later months of 2004. I learned a lot in the last three years, and I need to make sure that my portfolio demonstrates that.

So Apple released Safari for Windows, and the world probably won’t notice or care. I am going to pass on all the technical issues of the milliseconds that it renders JS & CSS faster. Those don’t matter to me, and to most of you they won’t matter either. It’s fluff; we’re talking milliseconds, not minutes or hours.

At present my web browser of choice like most of my fellow web developer friends is Firefox. I have customized just about everything there is to change. In fact, I have even customized the default settings of my OS. I prefer a smaller title bar, scrollbar, and font size than the default setting & have grown to love the MS Zune color scheme. In Firefox, I have more than a dozen add-ons. From my Bloglines Notifier to to Adblock to Permatabs, my web browsing experience is built to my own personal preferences.

As a web developer, I felt it was in my interest to give Safari for Windows a try. I downloaded it & installed it. Like iTunes, Apple, is again, breaking one of the most important rules of User Interface. They are forcing the OSX look & feel onto a Windows environment. Putting it into a more sensible means, Apple decided that the average user is not smart enough to know what kind of look & feel they want for their own interface. Sadly, this is enough for me to not bother with further exploration of the software. If I wanted to use a Mac interface, I would buy a Mac. If Apple chooses to port some of their software for a Windows environment, they should meet the anticipated expectation of a piece of Windows software. Can you even imagine how up in arms a Mac user would be if they opened IE on Mac & faced an interface that looked & interacted like a Windows interface?

I am sure Steve will mention some X-thousand downloads of Safari for Windows at his next presentation. Please note to subtract one from that number as I have already uninstalled mine.

Microsoft has a contest going on for the forthcoming Father’s Day holiday. Write an essay about a Dad & Gaming. The writer of the winning essay gets an xbox 360 & the dad it is written about gets 5 minutes of fame. Details can be found here. My buddy James took a crack at it. The essay is quite funny & now I think I am going to have to destroy him.

Jeremy Jacob Schlossberg is a good kid.

He’s an affectionate, confident, and curious child. He doesn’t scream, throw tantrums, or misbehave beyond what comes naturally to a boy his age. JJ is the kind of child that many soon-to-be parents dream about as they build their nurseries or buy their first baby shoes.

JJ wouldn’t be JJ if it weren’t for his parents. While many parents fret over how to raise their first child, Andy Schlossberg and his wife Theresa do us the disservice of making it look easy. It’s infuriating.

As a programmer and designer, Andy has helped develop websites for some of Hollywood’s top grossing films, such as “Pirates of the Caribbean [3]” and “Mission Impossible 3.” He’s an industry professional, but he would never admit to it.

Andy is an atypical parent and husband. Not long ago, his wife went back to school to earn a degree in Landscape Architecture. JJ popped in during the transition. While most fathers would take on extra hours at work to accommodate their family’s new responsibility, Andy quit his job and began working from home. Many didn’t agree with his decision, including myself. It was risky and unorthodox. Yet, after 18 months, Andy landed an impressive list of high-profile contracts. Theresa didn’t miss a class, and JJ has had a father to care for him at all hours of the day. Andy’s commitment to JJ is inspiring. He is gentle, patient, and supportive. Atypical indeed, but all for the best.

Andrew J. Schlossberg is the father of the year.

While Andy may be in his thirties, he’s still a kid at heart. He’s a geek. A big one. But, not the kind of geek that collects odor while surfing the web. He’s a gamer. During the day, he designs web games. At night, he moonlights on his own ideas. Books on game theory, animation, and programming line his shelves. I think he even has a few stacked next to the toilet. In short, Andy is a gaming fanatic.

However, he sucks at it. Oh my God, it’s embarrassing. We’ve been playing together for eight years and I still can’t help but destroy his sorry ass in Halo multiplayer. I try not to laugh as I watch him circle a round rock five times while looking for cover. He can hold his own in Dead or Alive, but that’s mostly due to his strategy of mashing random buttons. Now he’s bought a Wii, but watching him flail around with the WiiMote and Nunchuck makes me wonder if he’s playing or if I’m witnessing an upright seizure.

It just isn’t right. Therefore, should my essay place first in this competition, I vow to donate the Xbox 360 to the Schlossberg family. Andy needs all the practice he can get before JJ trumps his Guitar Hero highscores. From the looks of it, that might happen before grade school. This is a purely humanitarian decision, and I thank you for your understanding.