Lindissi

• 09:20 @HapDrastic because you don't work for the state? #
• 09:40 @HapDrastic paying state taxes doesn't get you much except for MORE state taxes, nowadays. #
• 09:42 Looking at my bank accounts and wondering about how I will weather the additional paycuts next year. #
• 10:35 @newsgal81 additional cuts in the form of mandatory contributions to retirement in April are certain. I just don't know the percentage. #
• 10:46 Kyle said this morning he wanted two of me. I agree: one to take care of my little snotty baby and one to write all this GC stuff. #fb #
• 12:18 @newsgal81 awwwww #
• 12:19 I think my daughter just lost half a pound with her poop explosion. #
• 18:08 Ayala's tendency to sleep with her eyes open may be useful one day, when she has kids of her own. For now, it just creeps her mommy out. #fb #
• 21:12 The guy from hootie and the blowfish just won Best new artist. And daughtrey is performing. I'm watching the CMAs?!? #fb #

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From Invisalign

Here we are at Tray 5R lower. Not much to report, really. Today, I go in for my upper retainer, which will also move one of the upper front teeth forward a little. I complained last time that they seemed faintly uneven. At least I can finally stop wearing upper tray of much grossness. And no more pseudo-button on the uppers either! Seriously, I started wearing that upper tray on March 10. MARCH. It is now November 12. That is eight months of wear for a tray that is designed to be worn for two weeks. No matter how diligent I am in cleaning, it gets gross, and it is yellowed. NEW TRAY PLZ.

The sharpest and deepest hurt I've ever felt is seeing the strongest man I know in pain. 

I'm not used to seeing Dad vulnerable.  I've tried so hard to be strong this past week, but tonight seeing him wince and groan and yell in pain and out of frustration, I lost it completely.  I can honestly say, without a doubt, if I could bear the pain for him, I would.

"You work thru it, Jennifer, you work thru the pain and you go on."

Even in his most trying moment, Dad is being strong for me.

....

The best feeling is support.  The acts of kindness Dad and I have received have humbled and awed me.  I have the best friends and family in the history of forever.

Tonight was so wonderful and meaningful to me.  After visiting Dad, I went to The Doctor's house.  He put on incredibly beautiful and relaxing music, poured me a glass of Zinf, and then put me to work making a salad while he cooked tuna, scallops, and shrimp.  He excused my lack of coherence and my mumblings and smiled and laughed.  He is so, so, so, so kind and thoughtful.  All the care he put into preparing everything...just wow.  He asked about Dad with real concern and displayed great empathy, but also put me at ease by explaining details to me (so much has been a whirlwind with the surgeons and me googling and bugging Sara).

I love that there are people in this world who are so full of love and care. 

Today I cried as I watched a young jogger stop and escort and elderly woman in a walker across Sports Arena Blvd.

I cried when I went to the florist to get Dad a Veterans Day bouquet and the florist, after inquiring about whom the recipient was, attached a "THANK YOU" balloon with "...for your service" written in permanent marker on it and a handwritten note of appreciation ("James, thank you for your selfless service to this great country") to it.

La dolce vita.

La vita è bella.

There is so much beauty in this world, so much to be appreciated and savored.

I'm savoring this feeling.  I never want to forget how appreciative and grateful I am for life right now, for everyone in it, for everything.  

God gave us roses so that we might have roses in December.
JM Barrie

.

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

• 14:31 Movie date with my husband earlier, and now pedicure (by myself). Today is a good day! #fb #
• 16:46 @ktdeeds in what context did BFing come up? Why would it be a no no topic? #
• 18:40 @ktdeeds ah. I've been teased about it b4. One of these days, if he's not nice, Trev'll find bottles of breastmilk all over his office. ;-) #
• 18:43 2day, during a convo w/ my coworker Mary, it occurred to me that I've been feeling like a slacker cuz I only worked a 1/2 hr this wkend. #fb #
• 20:39 I'm thinking i need to fenugreek it up. #fb #
• 06:23 I was proud of myself as a mommy when I did not LOL when a distraught Kyle told me that he wet his pants bcuz he had a bad dream about ... #
• 06:23 ...peeing standing up and getting pee in his mouth. #

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at work today while sitting at a free company provided lunch, my co-workers and i got into a discussion about religion. not as much a debate, but an open discussion about our respective beliefs. which is interesting because i've been reflecting upon my own beliefs while reading richard dawkin's book.

they laughed that i was probably the typical godless california liberal and i had to agree ;) seriously though, on a sliding scale between theism and atheism, i'm between atheist and agnostic... mostly leaning towards atheist. don't get me wrong, i think everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but personally i'm a "shit happens" kinda guy. the universes will be done!

seriously though, i know that there's a lot in the universe i will never begin to understand and i don't know WHY it is the way it is.

some people give me this look of complete disbelief that i could be void of any faith. but i think it's because nature and the universe makes too much sense to me! i mean, i'm 28 now... so who knows what i'll believe when i'm 38 :P

besides, if sleeping in on sunday is wrong, i don't want to be right!

Last week I was waking in the morning with a scratchy dry throat, but just chalked it up to the weather changes lately. Then Saturday it graduated to include runny nose, congestion and sneezing. Since then I've been trying everything to not infect Savy - wash/sanitize my hands umpteen times a day, not get in her face too much (which means no kissy monster attacks, boo), be really aware of my germiness especially around feeding time, and hand her off to Matt when he gets home to care for so she can get a germ break from me. This is all really tough since I'm a stay at home mom! Luckily, I'm feeling a lot better than I was Saturday, but there's still some congestion.

Now occasionally, Savy wakes up with a little congestion herself and gunk in her nostrils (probably from weather changes and really small nostrils/airways). But, this morning it was really bad. She was super congested and had it in throat and nose, gagging on it. :o( I'm pretty sure she got my cold. We squeegee'd her nostrils and did a nasal mist thingy. Hopefully that helps. I also called the pedi to see if there was anything else I should be doing or if she needs to be seen in the office. Poor baby.

Now I feel like our semi-quarantine for flu season has turned into complete lockdown so we can both get back to 100% and not be exposed (or expose others) to more sickies. This sucks.

• 08:35 K just made MIL and SIL laugh when he told them his morning was just 'ok' because he had a 'little bad confrontation with bad guys.' #
• 08:36 @newsgal81 welcome to pregnancy hormones, MAMA! :) #
• 11:56 @ktdeeds well, the sex has already been determined, technically. ;) #
• 12:06 Feeling a bit overwhelmed and sickly and tired today, but not exactly sick. Mommy's immune system of steel, ACTIVATE! #fb #
• 06:25 My little girl, who used to wake up once a night, is waking up every 3 hours. Between her and Kyle, I wake up 5 kajillion times a nite #fb #

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as weird as it seems, having one of our best friends come all the way out here to texas and stay with us sorta makes this house our home. if that makes any sense. i think playing host drove it home that this is our hizzy. i think it's settling in more and more that we're in TEXAS!

on that note, MAGS came out to see us! it was nice to have he over and show her around our little corner of dallas :P i hope she had a good time and was just comfortable while she was out here, as she was the first person to try out the "guest room"(/office)

i don't post much about work, BUT, this time i'll make an exception. basically there's your generic office drama and inter-department arguing. it drives me up the wall when people won't put their pride aside and work towards the greater good. i'm working to try and bring the departments together and a VP in my department recognizes this and is working with me to try and build an "all for one" attitude in the MIS department. so here's hoping.

people seem too attached and possessive of their systems, so when i ask a question about configuration or performance it's treated as a personal slight. one of the DBA's even asked me why i was "attacking the database as the problem" when i was simply asking for the benchmarks. in the context of the project i'm working on (performance tuning and load testing).

in non-work news, we've signed up for gamefly a couple weeks ago and so far it's been alright. the new releases (just as with netflix) as a bit harder to get and you have to be a bit patient. BUT, it's only $20/mo and that means for every ONE xbox game i would buy at retail, i can pay for 3-months of gamefly. so it works out financially.

i've been reading richard dawkin's the greatest show on earth: the evidence for evolution and although it's initial attitude was a little confrontational, the information laid out in the book is very well structured and easy to read. i find the points and examples it brings up interesting because it makes creationists sound like absolute retards.

he gave the example of a creationism can also be explained as: the world came into existence five minutes ago with everyone and everything coming into creation with memories of experiences and life to date. we came into being with holes in our clothes and everything as you see it.

it's laughable.

anywho! gonna watch some monday night football! :D

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• 17:49 Spent the day in Santa Monica with the inlaws. Going home now. twitpic.com/ou0p3 #
• 20:37 I just found a really good use for LJ: bitching about people I can't bitch about on FB. #
• 07:34 Kyle: women are tough, but not tables. #fb #

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• 10:26 How do I get to the children's pool at la jolla cove? #
• 10:31 Eat monster twitpic.com/on06c #
• 17:02 @vixyash yep. Boobs are magic. #
• 05:56 Going to LA today with my family by marriage, to visit w/ my family by birth. Santa Monica Pier is on the agenda today, I think. #fb #
• 06:16 An article on mommies and life/work balance. bit.ly/HXy6O #
• 06:54 @vixyash Ayala wakes up every day around 5 or 5:30 ish. I never really go back to bed after that, even though she does. I need "me" time! #
• 07:32 @vixyash did it with Kyle. Boies wasn't too worried about it and said we could wait until she gets teeth. #

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Maybe its because from kindergarten thru 6th grade, I was ALWAYS the tallest in my class (including boys).  Or that I started being the Fat Kid in 5th grade or so.  Or that I peaked at 270 pounds by age 24.

 

whatever the case, Ive always disliked being the GIANT.  So when I see pictures like this--



Despite wearing a sheet, and despite standing next to a model-esque beautiful girl, I still like that I look small. 

Yeah, Im still a size 12 and thats considered not-small, but whatev.  Yoga is teaching me to really love my body.  Im accepting myself and loving myself, curves and imperfections and all.

Life is too short to be unhappy or dwell on the negative or, frankly, be mean to yourself.

I grow so tired of the girls who constantly berate themselves and their bodies and obsess with weight and appearance.  I know, because Ive been obsessed with my weight before, too.  Sure, I got down to a size 8, but I was so obsessed with calories and working out and subsisting on an egg and broccoli.  Thats not healthy.

Here's a full body pic of me from a couple weeks ago:



You know what I see when I look at this picture?

A very, very happy woman. 

Life is too short for negativity.

These past few days, with my dad and all, I haven't been dwelling on negativity.  I got really sad at first from the shock of it all.  But then I focused on the positive...

Namely, the love and support of everyone around us.  So many people, some of whom don't even know my Dad, have been rallying around him.  I'm so blessed and grateful and thankful.  

During yoga on Tuesday, with the sun shining down, the breeze gently blowing, I took a moment and I thanked God for my life.  I do that a lot, actually.  Even during my darkest hours, I thank God.  Years ago, it finally occurred to me what a gift life really, truly is.  For all the pain and hurt, God never, ever gives us anything we can't handle.  I've realized that thru my most difficult times, God has always given me so many resources to get thru them--my friends and family, and even the love and support of strangers.

To not love my body would be to not love God.  This is the mortal shell given to me by Him, the vessel that houses my soul, and I will love it because it gives me the strength to carry on thru this gift of life.

I never take my loved ones for granted.  I am so thankful and appreciative and truly realize how special my loved ones are.

Despite the circumstances, I really am overjoyed right now.  I'm being The Light.

My coworker/friend/confidant/mentor who's a middle-aged pastor who volunteers at the prison on the weekends (and is married to a truly divine woman, both of whom have been so incredibly kind and wonderful to me) sent me this:

Darkness is the absence of light…not light is the absence of darkness.     I will explain it better. If you are in a lighted cabin in the woods at night (pitch black outside)…and you open the door, darkness does not creep into the cabin and overtake the light, the light from inside pierces the darkness outside….illuminating the surrounding area…in light there is strength…darkness will always run when confronted with the light….like cockroaches running for cover when the kitchen light is switched on, darkness recedes to the recesses of the room. The light has nothing to fear, for darkness has no power over it.

 

                Be the light.

 

• 11:36 LJ gurlz: will probably be a tad later than 12. must pump + walk to my car. Save a seat for me!! #
• 14:26 @nebyoolae cool! #
• 14:26 Lunch with the girlz was yummy. Sleepy now. /food coma. #fb #
• 16:55 Every day, around rush hour, I wish for a GO GO GADGET CAR! #fb #
• 20:51 @lechaz I um, was parked. #
• 06:19 Going around San Diego with MIL and SIL (and husband and baby) today! #fb #
• 06:53 Ayala talking to my SIL: bit.ly/1Xrql0 #

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• 11:33 @newsgal81 Are LJ peeps having lunch in lj tomorrow? #
• 15:04 @newsgal81 I love ultrasound pics! :) #
• 15:07 @radaly alrighty. See y'all tomorrow then. #
• 16:33 @newsgal81 "I am so happy all is well honey talk later" She's just excited. :-) #
• 16:34 I love working in the office after everybody else has left. It means I can have my music!! #fb #
• 05:42 @ktdeeds you're doing good. I wake up two hours early to leave on time #
• 05:44 I woke up with a rumbly in my tumbly and a craving for French toast. And a three year old's foot in my back. Ow. #fb #

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The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
( Read more... )

Feeling more guilty about not posting here anymore. But, I don't think anyone even reads LJ much these days. If I stopped posting forever, would you miss me?

• 10:09 Just got an email from UCSD payroll about the acceleration in state income tax withholding. Bummer. #fb #
• 19:43 LOL. It took 24 hours before MIL started the 'I'm going to take Ayala back to New York with me' jokes. :) #
• 22:00 Was going to take a furlough day today, but realized I had way too much to do. Just got what I needed to do done. Sleep now. #fb #
• 07:00 I find myself referring to grad students as 'the kids' now, even tho most of them are probably my age (defined as +- 2 yrs) or older. #fb #
• 07:08 @McAnza hah. I always say that the skills I've developed as a mom are mighty helpful in dealing with my faculty committees #

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• 08:12 In-laws are here this week + GC meeting in six days = OMG it's going to be a crazy week. #fb #
• 10:08 @SparklnMags Graduate Council #
• 10:09 Got my car registration renewed yesterday. My wallet wanted to run away when it heard how much it was. #fb #
• 14:04 contemplating getting rid of livejournal, and just keeping FB. I want to make a bound paper version of LJ though. It's 8 yrs of history. #fb #
• 14:22 @wndrbr3d agreed, for the second part. But I can blog on facebook too. #
• 14:34 @wndrbr3d also 140 characters are easier to write out than a blog post, when you work full time + two kids. :-P I'm not Dooce. #
• 14:39 @HapDrastic I always have a blog post kicking around in my head, but then I don't have time to get it down, and when I do, it's gone. #

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