OK, so, I'm behind... sue me... :-) (Announcing.....)

On Monday, Jeanne gave birth to our beautiful baby daughter!!

Mali Rose, came into the world under water, in her mother's hands and immediately snuggled to her mothers chest as they rested in a tub of body-temperature water. Although I was Jeanne's eyes and, though Jeanne has no recollection of many externalities or time frame, I helped maneuver Jeanne's body while she was focused on bringing the baby out, Jeanne pretty much did everything herself.

She was completely unassisted -- only slightly planned that way -- we were planning a home birth, but labor and birthing progressed so rapidly that our midwife didn't make it in time for the birth itself.

Once the midwife arrived, Jeanne was already out of the tub, sitting on a stool, wrapped in a towel, baby still connected, so after a quick look-see, the cord was clamped, I cut it and a few minutes later, the two were wiped down and in bed.

Jeanne had already prompted the suck reflex and Mali immediately took to the boob. I guess when you go from belly to boob in one move, you don't need to be taught to suck. Jacob, on the other hand didn't get the boob for about an hour after being born and required nearly 2 days of training before he sucked properly.

It's amazing how much more energy you have (specifially for Jeanne, but me too) when you're already at home and your labor and birth are so natural, relaxed, and physically, emotionally and psychologically stress-free.

Using Jacob's story as our only guide, we totally misread Jeanne's body cues and were SO glad we were SO prepared to have the baby at home. Because, even if we wanted to go to a hospital or maternity center, Mali would have been born in the car in rush hour. Though the birth was text-book uncomplicated, We learned that Jeanne doesn't have a text-book labor. When alone to think about labor, she gets good strong, frequent contractions; when distracted or focusing on something else, her labor spaces out. If we'd attempted to go to a hospital (or whatever) when Jeanne was "pretty sure" she was in stage 1, it would have been sometime around 8am. By that point, she was actually nearly at "transition" (phase 3 of stage 1).

Forget it. There would not have been enough time to get anywhere. Jeanne went from working through the surges ("contractions") to full-out pushing in a matter of seconds (by now, a little after 9am) and Mali was fully born by 9:17am. One moment she's pregnant, the next she's a mom again.

Meanwhile, I'm running around trying to find a good spot for the Vornado­­™ heating fan, unpack the home-birth kit, gather towels, and put plastic drop-sheets (shower curtains) in place. Did I mention the boiling water? Well, the real reason you need it is in case you don't have steril stuff to cut the cord an such, but in our case we needed it to add to the tub. We ran out of hot water when filling it the night before and ended up dumping cool water for several minutes which really cooled it a lot.

The first pot of water really hit the spot for Jeanne, she got such a relaxing sensation from it that she immediately went into uncontrollable Stage 2 pushing... In her words, "before the pot of water, she had a choice, after the pot, there was no choice involved." By the time I came back with the second pot, Mali's head was already sticking out of the birth canal (Jeanne was saying how she could feel her kicking inside her!) and with just a little support from Jeanne (not that there was much gravity to deal with) the rest of her slipped out like she was coming down a slide. During this quick interval was when I was coaching Jeanne on where Mali was and what to do so that she didn't inadvertently pull on her before she was out, and (from my perspective) keeping Jeanne from bobbing down onto her butt.

Anyway... that's the play-by-play from the dad's perspective.
Jeanne was (is!) a champ! She was (is!) so happy and I was (am!) so proud.

Big brother Jacob simply reminded us that he knows the sound of a baby crying whenever he heard Mali cry over the monitors, but otherwise he was oblivious while being pre-occupied by Sally, our nanny, who's great! He seems interested in seeing Mali once in a while, but otherwise, he's still more interested in seeing his mommy.

We visited the pediatrician the same day (I mentioned how much energy we all had!) and he proclaimed her as all well and no concerns.

As of this writing it's about 50 hours since birth. So far, the transition is going well. Mom and Mali are doing great and I even got a pretty decent night's sleep. (Better than night 1 when I mistakenly thought I'd get a better night's sleep on the living room couch.)

I'm so pissed I can't even bring myself to write about it...

I gave someone a lot of business... when the orders arrived NOT A ONE of the items were to specification. Either in terms of what was adverstised or, in other cases, in terms of what we asked to be included in the product.

All along, I was absolutely pleasant about the whole affair... even trying to help the sales guy (who turned quite thoroughly into an I-really-need-to-punch-him-hard-in-the-face shmuck) with pointing out process failures in his business.

To make a long story short, they sold us products that were mis-advertised (they claim to not have known and claim it was due to bad info they got from their supplier). Now it's months after they promised to make good on the product they won't take it back... but as soon as I got the I-really-need-to-punch-him-hard-in-the-face shmuck to the spoint at which he admitted he wasn't going to do anything he started leveling accusations and blaming me for why he won't take it back as well as throwing insults at me and my need for the originally specified product... using the "I've got a Masters in Computer Science" line as a way of telling me he can tell me over the phone (after not having ever met me) that I'm not qualified to open up a computer according to the owner's manual he told me to look in, in the first palce... ... further... that this bozo with a supposed "Masters in Computer Science" doesn't run anti-virus software on his PC at work and that he couldn't get rid of the virus after supposedly erasing and re-formatting his HD. Right... When I would calmly point out how he was off base by explaining to him facts, he'd level ad hominem attacks and accusations about me and my qualifications and come up with obtuse excuses...

Here's the text from my complaint filed with the California Dept of Consumer Affairs:

Misrepresented products (lap top).
Will not take return.
Will not refund for wrong product sold.
Will not replace with correct product.

Admit that their supplier has different product components and that their ad was for a product they neither ordered from the supplier nor sold to us. Claim their ad was based on marketing materials from their supplier and are not taking responsibility for not ensuring accuracy.

In a phone conversation, Mr. Garetti directed attention to the lap top user manual which clearly states the option to configure the display for higher resolution and provides instructions on doing so.

Neither the manual, nor the product, nor any materials provided by Mr. Garetti or his company state that by following the instructions in the manual would void our right to return the product for refund or replacement.

Mr. Garetti now claims that we voided our right to their return policy by acting in a manner counter to their policy for essentially following the instructions in the provided manual to which he referred. The adjustment required opening the product's lid (no more complex than opening the hood of a car) and flipping switches (just like light switches, only very small).

We acted in accordance with the instructions, and, we acted within our means to understand and follow the instructions -- which suggested using the edge of an ordinary credit card to activate the releases -- and Mr. Garetti claims we were neither authorized nor qualified to make the changes per the provided instructions.

Therefore, based on Mr. Garetti's claim that we 'tampered' with the product, he claims his company is no longer responsible for it and will not take it back or provide a refund or provide the product they fraudulently advertised in the first place.


Got zol im bentshn mit dray mentshn: eyner zol im haltn, der tsveyter zol im shpaltn un der driter zol im ba’haltn.

Learned something about myself...

I like it when I'm able to pinpoint self-truisms that help me characterize myself. When I'm able to articulate something specific about a way of being or a way of conduct or a way of behavior that holds together under scrutiny. When I can say, "this is how I am." Being able to do that gives me power over my instincts. It helps me be authentic more often. It helps me help others understand me because I can put into words the things that make me tick.

This evening, I experienced one such 'breakthrough' about myself: I don't like rules, policies, processes or philosophies that become absurd when tested at their limits.

As long as a rule (or whatever) has some mechanism of control built into it to keep it from becoming absurd, then it's OK. Here are a couple of examples that come to mind:

- Hyphenating kids names. When does it end? I don't take issue with couples wanting to keep their nacent last names, but why make your kid take them both? What are they going to do when they have kids? Add another? What if they marry someone who also has a double last name? Make it four?

- Inherited religious practices. Among very Orthodox Jews, it's custom (read: law ) that you inherit your father's customs AND you practice the most observant option that ensures you don't trip up at some point and cross a custom that might accidently embarrass or offend anyone who might also have a similar custom. So if your father refrained from doing something on the Sabbath because it was associated with non-Sabbath-worthy activity, you would live your Sabbaths the same way. Even if you didn't have the associated conduct and you had no other reason to behave in that way. Where does that end? Conceivably, some kid in five generations would have to live in a bubble because at some point every elder before him accumulated some prohibited activity associated with non-Sabbath conduct.

- Zero-tolerance policies. I'm not the first person to point out how ridiculous most so-called "zero-tolerance" policies are. But at last, I'm able to pin down why they grate me so hard at my core... beyond the mere intellectual dishonesty of them; beyond the fact that most such policies are rackets to eliminate their implementors from having to use real thought and demonstrate leadership. Zero-tolerance, at its limit, doesn't have the capability to deal with the volume that would result if it could ever be properly implemented. The net result is that the easy (and overwhelmingly erroneous) targets of accusations are 'prosecuted' and the true offenders are ignored.

There are many other examples. I won't detail them here, but I'll list a couple more with brief takes for grins:

- Vegan &/or Vegetarianism for humanitarian reasons. Let's see... how many field, orchard, and prairy animals are killed incedental to the harvesting and supply chain of non-animal products? How much leather and other hides are used somewhere in the supply chain of these products? What about the diets of the workers who're a part of that supply chain? (Absurd? That's the point!)

- Political/religious extremism on either side. Do extreme Liberals or extreme Conservatives actually believe it's plausible 100% of the population could live life in their ideal view? Do Muslim extremists, for example, actually believe they can get the rest of the world to become Muslim extremists?

very proud of myself

Not being a programmer... with a little help from Jeanne, I accomplished something on my Entinex Web site that I'm rather proud of... If you visit any interior page of Entinex.com you'll see on the left a question about "not finding what you're looking for". In it there's a link. What that link does and everything thereafter was pretty much my doing with Jeanne providing the 'validation' for whether there's a real e-mail address and whether the form was filled out. But other than that... and aside from some formatting tweaks it worked perfectly pretty the first time.

The bummer is there's no one on line at the moment for me to gloat about with.
Oh, well...

You see... Entinex.com gets a lot of visitors. It's a content-rich site. So, a lot of people are coming because they think they'll find answers to questions they're asking on Google or Ask.com. And, I've been doing a sucky job of keeping them as possible "suspects" for business. This new function should address this matter to some extent.

The most pathetic thing I've heard in a long time... how far must one stretch?

I'm driving between a meeting and my home office today when I hear a radio ad for... HOWARD DEAN!
Note the date.
Howard Dean has bailed out of the Democrat campaign for the Presidency as of what... nearly 2 weeks ago?

The ad wasn't from his campaign... but was from some other group of pathetic tag-alongs who have no one to support and money to burn urging people to vote for Dean in tomorrow's primary elections so that they can at least send people to the convention under the Dean banner to force their voice to be heard. They need 15%. If they got it, wouldn't it be one of the better showings in all?

Folks... the horse... it's dead.
G i v e   i t   u p .