Author: William

Pictures, Blogs and Katrina

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Kyllan has posted some more pictures of the house to her flickr account. It seems like just yesterday she was complaining about rain delaying the pooring of the foundation. It’s amazing to see how far things have come.

The House

After much “discussion” my good friend Neil has decided to start a blog. If you check out the url you will notice that he wasn’t very creative. He and his wife Tammy are expecting the birth of thier first child sometime this week. I know a few friends from Xavier have been reading my blog. You guys should visit Neil’s and say hello. There is now link to his blog in the right sidebar under the “Friends and Family” section. We will see if he actually updates it.
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Just in time for the anniversary of hurricane Katrina this news story popped up. A man took a boat and saved over 200 poeple during the flooding is being sued by the boat’s owner. “Embarrasment” and “mental anguish” are cited sited as some of the reasons. I will not be making a Katrina anniversary post. I wouldn’t know where to even begin. I tried watching Spike Lee’s “When the levees broke,” (the first Lee film credited “A Spike Lee Film,” and not “A Spike Lee Joint”) but it was too much and I turned it off. Here are a few news articles if you to see what other people are saying about the upcoming anniversary. I’m sure plenty more will pop up on the 29th.
Here, here and here

Better yet, if you want to get a sense of what life is like here in New Orleans one year after Katrina, check out “B’s” flickr page and blog. He is a faculty member at Xavier, my alma mater, and lives in an area of mid city that was flooded. His blog, “Life in the flood zone,” really provides a peek into how the aftermath of Katrina has effected our daily lives. Even if you don’t read a single post you should scroll through a few pages just to get a sense of what life is now like in their neighborhood post-K. His flickr page is filled all to familiar images of the damage that still remains. If you go back far enough, he has pictures of Xavier’s campus about a month after the hurricane. I am adding links to his blog and flickr page to the “favorite blogs” section of the sidebar.

Treatment

William 9 Comments

As many of you know, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year. The diagnosis occurred before I started the blog and while many of you inquired about her health in e-mails and phone calls, I have never discussed it in a post. I asked my mother to send me an e-mail about her treatment so that I could post it to the site and she could tell everyone in her own words about the progress she has made.

Hi William,
I was diagnosed with breast cancer on April 13, 2006. Chemotherapy started May 1. I finished chemotherapy on August 7. I have been on immunotherapy for one month and have 11 months to go. I will be having several weeks of radiation sometimes during the immunotherapy. When radiation starts, it will be 5 days a week. My chemotherapy was once every two weeks. My current treatments are once a week. I’m hoping the oncologist will change my treatments to once every 3 weeks soon. This will mean that I will get 3 times the Herceptin that I’m getting now but only once every three weeks. The toxins should be out of my system in 4-5 months. I look forward to seeing all of my side effects from the chemotherapy disappear. I have been very fortunate not to have had severe side effects and I have been very blessed to have so many caring family members and friends supporting me through this.

Love,
Mom”

Thank you to all my friends and family for your continued support. As my mother’s treatments continue, I will post updates on her progress to the blog.

The Tour

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While in Dallas our parents toured the construction on the new house. My dad used the video capture mode on his camera to record a brief tour. You can check it out below. My parents flew out today. Kyllan’s Parent leave tomorrow. I’ll let make kyllan post and tell everyone about all of the wedding details they planned this past week.

Changes

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I may be making some changes to the site. Please let me know what you think of the look and if everything is working properly.

EDIT: I am having some issues. One feature, Kyllan didn’t even know we had on the last template, the other can’t be seen in Internet Explorer. (I use firefox, so should you…) Both issues deal with site navigation. You use to be able to click on the header at any time to return to the front page. Now you have to use the “home” link at the top of the image. In firefox there is extra text in the header, that I don’t want, that functions as a link. I can’t seem to fix one issue without breaking the other. (Issue fixed. I’ll save the other issue for later.) Kyllan and Kim N. gave the update a thumbs up. Let me know what you think… Back to firefox. I set most of my links to open new windows (pop). In firefox this opens a new tab in the current window. As Kyllan reminded me earlier today, most people don’t use firefox. In the future, would you prefer I make links open in your current window? Am I wasting my time even posting links? (Tab browsing is great. It allows users to open mutiple web pages inside of one window while web surfing. IE 7 will also feature tab browsing. The beta is now available, but if you didn’t know that, you probably not interested in using a beta. The beta for media player 11 is also available…

Chris

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Yesterday my department had our hurricane preparedness meeting. It appears we had good timing because tropical storm Chris appears to be heading towards the gulf. We are not getting nervous or anything, but lets just say we are keeping an eye out. People here aren’t ready for another hurricane. If you haven’t already herd me say it, I can’t wait to get out of this city.

In other news… Well, I don’t really have any other news. The first mover stopped by to get an estimate for the move to Denver. Kim N. uploaded some more pictures to her flickr account. The Jacksonville Jaguars started training camp. (Kim P., did you see that Joe Paterno says he is going to coach for ten more years?!?)

Lab Space

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My parents had a good trip this weekend. This very well may be the thier last trip to New Orleans until my defense and/or graduation. Who knows when that may be?… They arrived Friday and flew out Sunday, so it was a quick trip. We managed to fit in a tour of the 9th ward and lake view. (These are the same areas on my “Post Katrina” DVD. Sadly, little has changed since I shot the footage 7 months ago.). We stopped by Jaques-Imo’s Friday night for dinner, one of Kyllan’s favorites.

Here are a few photos of the lab space in Denver, shot by the PI’s wife on thier last visit. (I have not been up yet.) There are a couple more on my flickr account. The first is our building, the second is what the lab bays look like.

My voice was heard

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Kyllan’s sister Kim N. has setup a flickr page. With her permission, I have placed a link in the “Friends & Family” link section of the sidebar. Just in case there are some weirdoes out there, she has hidden her photos. So for all her family members, register for flickr and let her know so she can share them with you. (If you do, you can see Drew learning how to swim!)

Where did the week go? My parent’s will be in town this weekend. It will be their first time seeing New Orleans since the hurricane. My sister and I having both gone to Xavier, my parents are/were very familiar with the city. They will be in for a shock. I am still mad I couldn’t integrate a flash player directly into the page in a previous post (WYSIWYG screwed it up and there has to be a better solution than turning it off…) Maybe I will take some video of their tour and try again. It is really disappointing to see what little progress has been made since the hurricane.

…For anybody looking at the time of this post, I was catching on some reading for the lab. I’m overdue for questioning. I had something else to say, but I’m tired and forgot.

Get flickr Accounts!!! Maybe Skype

William 2 Comments

I guess the lack of post this past week shows just how slow it was. Progress was made in the lab, but nothing you would want to hear about. The power was out for several hours on Saturday, but that is normal here. I was hoping to have several photos to post from my trip to Dallas, but my camera stopped working after the first couple of pictures. I did manage to get a couple of the house and Kyllan got a shot of her toes while trying to fix it. She employed the “slap it really hard” technique. This was the only way I got the few pictures of the house. It only provided temporary results. They are on my flickr account. I didn’t post them because most of the work was wiring and plumbing so you don’t see much progress. (Que Kyllan saying, “What’s taking them so long?”)

I added Skype buttons to the site’s sidebar. I think Skype is great. After I get done convincing some of you use flickr, (Kim P., Kim N., Neil and Jamaal) I will start trying to get you guys on Skype. If you are not familiar with skype, think of it like instant messenger for voice. I know, most IM clients have a voice function. Skype is really a VoIP service. It is voice and webcam first, chat second. The others are visa versa. I won’t go into all the technical stuff. I think Skype is much better than the other options out there. eBay buying them for $2.4 billion says so too. Mom & Dad, you have no choice. Everyone else, take your time. I guess you don’t like sharing photos with friends and family. I understand. Trying things like flickr and Skype is quick and easy can be scary. Your parents want to see pictures of thier grandchildren and do video calls while the kid sits on your lap are happy talking to you on the phone long distance and hearing the kid in the background.

Oh yeah. Here is a picture of the new camera. Well, the new camera box taken with the new camera. I hope you guys have a good 4th of July. I’ll probably end up in the lab. Maybe I’ll go see the new Superman movie.

New Camera

Move Date, Dallas & Vendors

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I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the move to Colorado from friends and family the past few days. The word is that we will move out of the lab on November 1st. Our start date in Colorado will be November 15th. I will keep everyone update as I continue to get information. My PI will be out of town for the next week, so information will be sparse. I will try to get some pictures he took of the new lab space on his last trip when he gets back.

I will be in Dallas this weekend. Kyllan and I are going to meet with a couple of photographers while I am in town. Kyllan will also give me a tour of the Hilton, which is where our reception will be held. (Please send all complaints on lack of wedding and house updates to Kyllan.)