Webb Family Blog

OK… It has been a while since I last posted. I’ll try to keep everyone up-to-speed…

When Kellie had her surgery, they applied a plaster posterior splint, a device very similar to a cast, but not completely encompassing. She had that on until Wednesday. Thankfully, everything fell into plan, allowing me to go to Kellie’s appointment with her on Wednesday. She got the plaster taken off and a nurse cleaned her foot under the old cast. It was replaced with a removable walking boot. It is a big, heavy device that has a hard sole and side braces to keep the foot from moving. Since the old one has been taken off, Kellie has had problems with swelling on her big toe. She is supposed to be doing range-of-motion exercises on that toe.

Another thing that has been going on, with me particularly, is a new assignment at work. I’m trying to come up a with a database for keeping track of statistics for our Continuous Quality Improvement project. I’ve been brainstorming on HOW to do it and I think using MySQL would work well. Without too much extra work, this would allow the interface for entering and querying data to be a web-based interface, allowing for people needing to do it over the Internet, using software they already have, anywhere they are. Good idea, but I’m needing to rapidly teach myself how to design a relational database. I’ve been working on several tutorial programs, trying to understand it all. It is definitely a lot more complicated than a flat database, but I know it will be a lot better if done properly. In a relational database, you have to break things down into their smallest elements, which isn’t always obvious. It appears I’m going to need to do this project TWICE… once in a flat design to get it up and going, then redo it all correctly.

Another weekend has come and past.  I guess the biggest event for me was my parents came to visit.  As noted in Sad News, my sister’s father-in-law was not doing well and he died March 11^th.  His funeral was this past Saturday afternoon.  My parents came up from Modesto for the funeral.  They came to visit with Kellie and I for an hour or so.  It was nice to see them.  Other than that, I’ve spent most of the weekend just hanging out with Kellie. I’ve spent very little time (for me) hanging out on the computer.  I’m still hoping to get more family involvement on the Spidered Webb(site since closed).  I’m looking for new tools to make it more useful.  I’m looking for a way people can send email to a special address, so their message will be posted on the forum site, but haven’t found quite what I’m looking for yet.  If I can find JUST what I’m looking for, it will make it easier for some to transition into using it over email for mass family communications.

I have been managing home alone for the last two days and have been doing well. My mom Donna had a scare yesterday. She has been having a large amount of edema in her right leg the past week or so and a moderate amount of pain. She had taken my Grandmother to the Doctors for a check up and Dr Mike noticed my mothers leg. He suspected that she may have a DVT, a blood clot. She was sent to Roseville Kaiser Hospital for some stat labs and an emergent ultrasound. The good news is that the tests were negative, the bad news is they don’t know why she is having such edema. After mom was done at Kaiser she come over with lunch and helped me wash my hair. No matter how crummy a mom feels, she always puts her crummy feeling kids first. My mom is coming over on Friday as well. I am looking forward to spending time with her. Crystal came over on Tuesday for a visit. She brought lunch for Ron and I and hung out for a while. My friend Helen, a Nurse at Kaiser ICU came by that night as well. We had a nice visit. She and Ron know each other from work also. Her husband works with the Seventh-day Adventist church travailing all over the US. I can’t remember exactly what he does with the church .

It’s now Sunday. Since Kellie’s foot surgery, I’ve been lounging around with her most of the time. I have accomplished a LITTLE, but not much. Probably the biggest accomplishment is the new TV stand. Last week, Kellie and I purchased a new TV stand from IKEA. It is called the Oppli. It was $100 and despite being made of compressed sawdust, it is quite strong. I’ve heard people complain that IKEA furniture is confusing to put together. I found it quite the opposite. It was very easy, despite not a single word showing up in the instructions. It was just pictures. I could have figured it out without, but it would have taken me a bit longer to figure it out completely. I then had to pull ALL my AV equipment out and re-organize the whole clutter of cables going everywhere behind the TV. Here is a picture of the final job…

Those that were here at Christmas know this looks a LOT better. It is nice to get the TV up and off the ground. As you can see in the picture, there is room for all my AV equipment. There isn’t MUCH room, but there is still a little space for my FAX machine and telephone base. In case anyone is curious as to what that red thing on the ground is, that is a Kong… one of Bear’s toys.

Since I had the camera out, I thought I’d take a few other pictures…

The first is Kellie on her crutches, the other is Bear, sitting on the floor in the hallway.

Ron has been reminding be for a while that this is the Webb Family blog, not just the Ron blog. I have been very busy lately with work, keeping up the house and getting ready for surgery. The pain is much worse that I had expected it to be. Ron and my mom have been taking great care of me. Ron always says that he liked to work in the ER because he could keep more of a separation and did not have to deal with as much of the nurturing and hand holding fluff. But Ron has been taking great care of me, getting pain meds, ice bags, adjusting the pillows just right and helping me with the crutches. No weight bearing for six weeks seems like such an undaunting task at this time.

I guess I haven’t mentioned it yet on the blog… but Kellie had foot surgery this morning for a mis-aligned great toe on her right foot.  We had to be at the surgery center at 6:30 AM.  Donna, her mother, came over and went with us to the surgery center.  After a few hours, her doctor came out and mentioned that everything went well.  Kellie has to have NO weight bearing on the right foot for 6 weeks.  She’ll be on crutches.  She was in a great deal of pain upon arriving home.  As can be expected, she was also quite tired and she is currently sleeping.  I’ve been checking on her frequently, but trying not to wake her.  Donna prepared her some food before leaving.  I’m TRYING to be a good husband and give Kellie support. 

Last night, Bear got loose.  I was still at work when this happened.  As he did once before, he thought it was a fun game to stay away.  Kellie was quite upset at him.  He apparently went down the neighborhood checking out all the homes… even going inside if the door was open.  She eventually caught up with him.

As you may have seen from my post in the "Announcement" category, I have been messing around with new online content.  I have created a forum for family discussion.  I’m hoping it gains popularity in the family.  In case the "artwork" on the forum looks hokey, I did it in only 5 minutes.  If anyone has a better design, let me know.

As anyone regularly reading my blog can tell, I have been making many small changes to the blog for a few weeks.  I’ve been trying to learn many new things in regards to editing PHP scripts and CSS stylesheets.  I have also been trying to think of a way to get more involvement with family… as that is one of my goals by hosting a blog.  I then came up with an idea to branch off a bit into a family forum.  I’ve been using forums for years, but never really understood the under-workings of them.  The more I’ve been messing around with PHP, CSS, MySQL databases and stuff, I figured I’d try looking into forum software.  Seeing as though I’m doing this for fun and not for a job, I’m not looking to actually PAY anything for it… just learn how to do it via Open Source software.  I found an Open Source program called phpBB.

After downloading the software, I thought about HOW I wanted to implement the forum.  One thing I was hoping to do was to improve the way our family communicates as a group.  Currently, when we want to plan an event, we use email to put in our "two cents."  The To: line gets pretty long and sometimes, someone unintentionally gets left out.  With the forum, you write your message and it goes up.  Those that set up their account to get notifications of new messages will get an email that something new is posted.  I probably won’t need that, as I’ll probably be checking it as frequently as I check my email, which is pretty-much several times a day.  This will allow the ability to run polls… for example, if we are planning on having a dinner, you could put up a poll asking people what they’d like from a group of options, like "Lasagna", "Pizza" or "Go out to eat".  People then vote… you can make decisions based on that.  (I can limit who can and can’t vote if it gets abused.)

After thinking about it for a bit, I then thought I could expand my original idea of JUST the Webb family, and include the extended family.  I added the Curry family (in case Debbie & Homer would like to have a place for their family to communicate), as well as the Ewing, Taaffe and the Weifert families.  This is totally flexible.  If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.  At least at first, people will be able to read and write in any of the families forum, but if that gets to be a problem, I can make some changes.

I guess I should tell you how to find the forum…  The easiest way is from this here blog… Just below the blue title bar, there is a white bar with currently 3 buttons on it… "About," "Subscribe," and "Forum".  Click on "Forum."  The URL for it is http://forum.kellieron.net (site no longer exists).  Before you can write or vote in any poll, you must register AND login. Near the top, there is a clickable link called "Register".  Click this and it will take you to an age verification page (I couldn’t figure out how to disable that).  It then takes you to the registration page.  Choose a username… the name you want others to see.  Enter your email address.  Enter a password you would like to use for the site.  These are the mandatory things to fill out.  Unless you have an AIM or ICQ account, you can ignore that stuff.  If you have a web-page, you could enter that.  You can list where you live… like I entered "Roseville, CA."  The default time should be "GMT -8" for Pacific time… Obviously, Richard or Debbie may want to choose their own time.  I believe Debbie would be just "GMT."  Once you submit, it will send you an automated email.  Check your email and click on the key for confirmation.  Go back to the forum and "Log In", using your new username and password.  You can always go back to your "Profile" later and adjust some of the stuff you set in your registration process.  You can create custom signatures (text shown after every message you write… like your name) or avatars.    You can find or create any avatar and upload it to the forum for your use.  If you need help with it, let me know. 

For some of you, this should all be a "piece of cake", but I’m sure others will have SOME difficulty at first.  The bottom line is that the more you use it, the more useful it becomes.  I’m hoping everyone likes it. 

It was big news this past week, IKEA opened in West Sacramento. The store opened last Wednesday. We went to go check it out today. The store is quite large, although I’m told that it’s smaller than others. Previously, the nearest store was in Emeryville, near Oakland and Berkeley. They are most known for their furniture, but they make many other home furnishings… like kitchen-wear, fabrics and household tools. Their prices are pretty good for many things. Their quality ranges from very nice to disposable. An example of how cheap things can be, we saw a plastic dog food dish for $0.75… How can you go wrong at that price? We weren’t originally planning on purchasing anything, but Kellie found some small wooden shelves for displaying cookbooks that she wanted… they were $6/each.

After going to IKEA, we headed over to one of our favorite restaurants… Johnny Carinos Country Italian. It was quite delicious. We were originally planning on taking Bear to dog training tonight, but weather will prevent that from happening. As it looks now, we’ll just spend the rest of the day inside.

Today has been a deceivingly productive day.  It started off with the realization that our front lawn wasn’t looking good (grass uneven in height) and that it needed to be mowed NOW!  It was about to start raining and I didn’t want it to be wet when I mowed, so I jumped out of bed, quickly threw on some clothes, and mowed the front lawn.  Kellie was initially still asleep when I started doing this… around 9:30 AM.  Bear, on the other-hand, wanted to be out front with me.  He "told" Kellie that I was outside and wanted to be there too.  As I was finishing the last strip, I was met by Kellie and Bear.  I put the lawn mower away and we headed out for a walk.  We then sat down and watched a movie… National Treasure.  It had recorded on our high-definition (HDTV) digital video recorder. 

Another task that I worked on today was… again… on my blog.  My parents have complained that the size of text was too small to read.  One solution is in your browser, go to "View" and scroll down to text size.  You can make text either larger or smaller.  After you close the browser though, it may not return to the same size the next time you come back.  I found a way that SHOULD increase the text size.  I’ve been looking into the programming of my WordPress theme.  A theme is the look and feel of the page.  There are literally thousands of themes to choose from.  Beyond that, they can also be modified, if you know what you are doing.  Essentially, this here blog is a database and a database viewer.  When I write an article, I use a program called Qumana, that is similar to a word processor.  I type in what I want to say and then hit the "Publish Post" button.  Like a word processor, I can add formatting to the text, like bold, italics and underline.  I can create links by highlighting text that I want, and telling it where I want people to go if they click on it.  When it gets posted, it adds a new entry into a database.  The new entry stores information into many new fields.  The main field is the large, formatted text that I wrote.  It also stores information like… who wrote it (Kellie or I), what category (ie.. Ron’s Ramblings, Announcements, Blog Stuff), the time it was posted, and a few other details.  The theme then translates that database into the look and feel I wanted it to be.  I can make radical changes in the way my blog looks by changing the theme, but the content will be exactly the same.  I’ve found the theme that I liked the most, but have modified it to my liking.  I’m still learning, but I found the bit about text size in the body of each post and increased the size.  The size WAS "0.75" and I changed it to "1."  I’d appreciate some feedback from people reading this as to if they can notice a difference. Just fill click on comments below and follow the instructions for leaving a comment.

Besides my blog, I also worked on something else today that makes me feel satisfied.  I currently own 3 ReplayTVs.  These are standard-definition DVRs that can stream video from one machine to another.  I had 2 currently hooked up to the big-screen TV, and one packed in a box in the attic.  The reason it was in the attic is that I didn’t have a network cable to plug it in, in the bedroom.  Back around Christmas time, I purchased a D-Link DWL-G820 Wireless Gaming Adapter, which is a wireless-ethernet bridge.  It allows me to connect wired ethernet devices to connect to my wireless access point.  Basically, I guess you can say it adds wireless capability to networked devices (computers, gaming systems or DVRs) that don’t already support wireless.  I used my original device in my computer room, but have just purchased another for the bedroom.  I hooked up the ReplayTV that had been in the attic and now I can record, pause and replay live TV in the bedroom.  I can record up to 3 different shows at the same time (since I have 3 machines) and I can watch them on either the big screen or the bedroom TV.  It’s working great now. 

It’s Saturday night, and I’m sitting home alone with Bear.  Earlier today, Kellie and I drove by the dog park, but unfortunately, it was closed again.  Kellie went in to work at 2 PM this afternoon.  I then took a good nap.  This evening, I went to one of my fellow CCT nurse’s home for Ultimate Fighting Championship "Fight Night".  I’m not really into fighting sports, but I figured it may be fun to socialize.    I DID actually have fun.  I’m now back at home.  Bear is eating a bone while I’m typing.  Other that all this, it’s been a pretty slow day.