Under Control

So things are going pretty well.

At work, we just went live with our new Trading system. As I said, this is a big deal project, spanning over two years, involving updates to several applications, a couple new applications, and all the back-end glue that lets the systems interact with each other (the Order Generation program needs to talk to the Trading program, which in turn needs to output stuff to the back end Accounting system). As with any software, there were (and certainly still are) some bugs. In a Trading system, the worst kind of bug comes when orders are generated that shouldn't have been. We might buy the wrong thing, or sell too much of something. When those trade errors happen, we correct the problem so that the client gets whatever they should have gotten, and eat any costs. In the first week of our big project, I understand that there was something like $100 in trade errors. This is huge. Trade errors can easily be tens of thousands. So, things are going pretty well, and it feels good.

I also mentioned that Dr. Dave and his family were here for a week, and that was a lot of fun. One thing I realized while playing with Ben was how much we use our imagination as a child, and how little we use it as adults. Ben and I spent a while on the airplane (our big chair). He had on my gaming headset (with microphone), and we'd have to talk to the tower to request permission to take off and land, as well as instruct the flight attendants to start handing out Oreos and milk (and sometimes "chiiickennnn feeeeeet...") I was a bit worried about how all our schedules would interact (naps, etc), but there weren't any problems at all.

Allison has made some pretty big strides lately. Up until recently, we'd still swaddle her for bedtime, because if we didn't, she'd bonk herself in the face and wake herself up. She was also waking up multiple times in the night, and each time required about 20 minutes of holding and comforting to get her back to sleep, followed by the dread of trying to put her down in bed without waking her up, and sneaking out of her room. Sometimes that was followed by getting back into bed, only to have her wake up 5 minutes later.

After doing some reading, and thinking about how we wanted things to work, we decided that she needed to learn that her crib was a place for sleeping, and that she should be able to wake up and put herself back to sleep. So for a few nights, when she'd wake up, we'd let her cry a bit instead of immediately rushing in to pick her up. And it didn't take a whole lot of time before she got the picture. Now when she wakes up in the night, she'll cry for a few minutes, and go right back to sleep. And last night, as far as we can tell, she was asleep at 6:30pm and slept through to 7am. This is a good trend.

What's a little scary is that she's becoming mobile. She'll now frequently go from sitting to all-fours, and can kind of inchworm or half-crawl across the floor. It's slow and effortful, but I'm pretty sure she'll be cruising in a week or two. Time to buy childproof cabinet locks and outlet protectors! The problem with crawling is once she gets to where she wants to go, she doesn't really know what to do, and is left stomach-down and unhappy. The maneuver to get from all-fours back to sitting will be a big step.

Another big development is that we're having our kitchen redone, and since my parents are in Montanny for a while, we've moved into their Del Mar pad. The 7 minute commute is pretty awesome.

So, that's about the latest news. With all of the above, things have been pretty hectic for the last couple (months), but I'm hoping we're back into a good groove.

Some quick movie hits:

I third-wheeled with Iwan and Sara to see "Iron Man", and thought it was pretty decent. Worth seeing. That's probably as high-praise as you'll get from me for a summer blockbuster superhero movie.

Diana and I independatly saw "LA Confidential" when it came out, and neither of us remembered it, or felt like we "got it" the first time around, so we Netflix'd it and watched it last night. I really liked it, and not sure why I didn't the first time I saw it. Maybe it's got an intricate enough plot that if you don't pay close attention, it's easy to get lost.

I still have Indy Jones on my list to see. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, but what am I going to do, not see it?