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June 15, 2008

Flood 2008

My heart has been so heavy. I've been wanting to post about the floods. But I struggle with trying to find the words. The devastation is so widespread. Homes, businesses and jobs lost. I have worked with many families in the flooded areas. I have friends whom have lost their home. I cry as I watch elderly people not wanting to evacuate because they won't leave their beloved pet. I can't imagine having a loved one in the hospital, possibly in critical/serious condition and need to be evacuated in the middle of the night. The weariness of the first responders is evident in their faces as I watch them heroically work 72 hour shifts and patiently deal with the intense emotions of distressed people.

The flood waters have not touched our home directly, although Kevin (my husband) is now unemployed due to the flood of the quarry. Since Kevin was self employed he does not qualify for unemployment benefits, although we've been blessed to find out today, that he DOES qualify via FEMA unemployment benefits. PTL!

I was searching for a picture that would capture the devastation....... then Amy posted this video.

June 10, 2008

I did it again. I let him go.

I let Nevin go to Camp Courageous for the week. This is his third year. The first year was torture, the second year much easier.

This year...... a little harder. I'm not sure why.

Maybe because it was such a hubbub getting ready this year. At the same time I was packing him, I was getting ready to leave for a long weekend to Indiana with dd (she was in a wedding)............ so I left Friday morning before he was up......... and then wasn't going to be able to see him before dh took him to camp on Sunday. However, we ran a little ahead of schedule so I was able to "show up" and get a couple hugs and drop him off at camp.

Maybe it was because I spent a couple days before I left doing some "crisis management" with dd..... and Nevin didn't get much attention.

Maybe it was because last year, I knew he had an outstanding counselor (from some inside information). And this year, it appeared he had a counselor in her first year and first week. And I lost my "insider info source" this year.

Maybe it was because we dropped him off at the very end of the "window of time" to register campers (because they were waiting for me to get home from Indiana) and so we didn't have any "hanging around" time before we left him.

and maybe it's just because....... like...... "just because"

Can you tell I miss him today? Boy, it's hard letting him grow up!

June 2, 2008

I won!!

Actually, I didn't win....... well, actually I did win, just not officially. I'm a "weeener" (said in Kevin's best hillbilly accent) because my dear friend Amy won a contest on A is for Aiden and decided to have it sent on to me (because she loves me!). It is a beautiful Down Syndrome Awareness bracelet. Thanks, Amy! luv ya!! Now Nevin and I can watch excitedly for the mailman together (he... waiting for his Blockbuster DVD's and me.... for my bracelet.)

Nevin's blog

Just last week, I was thinking.......... I have to find a way to "keep" all the work that we have done on Nevin's blog for him. I'm still pondering just how to do that. Can I back it up? Can I print it? Should I just make Monthly books of the daily stories and print them ....... i.e. use the pictures we posted and just "re-create" the story to print, etc.

He loves to look at the monthly summaries (the calendar made of thumbnails of his daily stories......... you can see it by clicking on the name of the month just above the calendar at the left side of the blog). "hundreds of stories" he says.

Then, Saturday.......... we couldn't get on the photoblog to post. Hmmm..... maybe they're updating. Sunday..... we couldn't get on the blog..... Hmmm...... this is scary. Sure hope they're not down for good.

Then, ....... I got this: :( Thank the Lord, it appears that non of the data was lost. Praise be!! This has become a very important thing in our lives. I guess once it's up and running, we'll be figuring out how to "back it up" soon.

June 01, 2008 - 9:10pm PST

Dear Photoblog.com members,

Yesterday evening at 4:55pm, the datacenter that houses Photoblog's servers experienced a significant disaster, but luckily none of the servers in the datacenter were damaged and no data was lost. Here is the email we received from them:
This evening at 4:55 in our H1 data center, electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding our electrical equipment room Thankfully, no one was injured. In addition, no customer servers were damaged or lost. We have just been allowed into the building to physically inspect the damage. Early indications are that the short was in a high-volume wire conduit. We were not allowed to activate our backup generator plan based on instructions from the fire department. This is a significant outage, impacting approximately 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers. All members of our support team are in, and all vendors who supply us with data center equipment are on site. Our initial assessment, although early, points to being able to have some service restored by mid-afternoon on Sunday. Rest assured we are working around the clock. We are in the process of communicating with all affected customers. we are planning to post updates every hour via our forum and in our customer portal. Our interactive voice response system is updating customers as well. There is no impact in any of our other five data centers. I am sorry that this accident has occurred and apologize for the impact.
Sincerely,
Douglas J. Erwin
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer