Posted by jcfiala

Had a lovely day out today, including some time spent at our friends Mike and Anna's house for some gaming and conversation.

Couldn't stay late, though, as we had a free invite to a 'Just Between Friends' event. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but it's pretty awesome for a new parent - they're a periodical consignment shop entirely about the new parent. We'd already bought quite a lot of great baby stuff from them, but one of the things they're really wizard with is clothing - outfits for 1-4 dollars apiece blows away the prices in the malls. This time we went through and got:

  1. A new carseat and base for $15. (I was going to get just the base, but those were $20. Go figure!)
  2. A box of about 166 size 1 diapers for $20.
  3. About 15-17 outfits, god knows, really
  4. A changing table pad to put Rose on so she doesn't roll off downstairs, $4
  5. And a little plastic cage to wash baby bottle bits in, for a buck.
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Posted by jcfiala

So, being a Father has continued being fun. And it really is, mostly. Rose is a 'quiet' child, which doesn't mean that she doesn't have those times when she's screaming her lungs out, but does mean that there are nice, long stretches of time when she sleeps.

When we're lucky, she sleeps during the nighttime.

Happily, my wife Tammy is being very generous and mostly lets me sleep through the night unless it's a really bad night and she needs another man on deck to handle the baby while she gets some rest, which happily doesn't happen that often. Otherwise it's feedings - mostly Tammy's responsibility, since we're breastfeeding - diaper changes, and so on. Diaper changing is mostly pretty easy, although occasionally you run into a problem with her deciding to go while you're changing her... whoops!

Trying a new Theme

22 Aug 2011
Posted by jcfiala

It's been a long time using just plain Garland, and I wanted to try something different, and especially something where the html is a little more sane. So, here's me trying Nitobe for a while.

Posted by jcfiala

I just had a nice light weekend. Mostly it entailed diaper changes on baby Rose, although a fair amount of time was spent driving around to deliver a baby shower present.

Parenting, so far, has been generally easy. Admittedly this is partially thanks to my mother's help, who flew out early to help us get by this month, but really at this point my duties as a parent are like this:

  • Feed Baby
  • Change Diapers / Keep Baby Clean
  • Burp Baby
  • Hold Baby

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Posted by jcfiala

Wow!

My Daughter has been born. Rose Fiala was born at 7:22 pm on Tuesday, as her mother had a C-section. Unfortunately mom's hips were a bit too small for baby's head, and they decided it would work best to ease her out another way. Rose is in great shape and is doing all sorts of newborn baby things, particularly the 'be really cute' part. Mom's doing great too!

Rose is pretty big - 6lbs 13oz, so one wonders how big she would have gotten if she'd gone for 40 weeks! Wow.

We're very tired. :)

Grandma and Grandpa Koonce are up here in Denver now and visiting, and they're loving Rose a lot. My parents are coming out later this month.

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Posted by jcfiala

(I originally wrote this for G+, but since it's long enough, I'm making it a blog post too.)

So, I'm making a new component for webform in Drupal, called 'Multigrid'. It's based on the grid component, which if you don't remember it, allows you to define a set of common options (like, neutral, dislike, hate beyond rational thought) and define a set of questions, and then it sets up a grid of radio buttons, where the answers are across the top and the questions go along the left side.

If you're picturing the online survey you filled out recently in the mistaken hope that you might win $500 after eating at sit-down-chain-restaurant-326, then that's pretty much it.

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Posted by jcfiala

I really like Drupalcamp LA. It was a bit of a whim, the first time I went out there, but I went and had a blast. Not only did I get to enjoy Drupal with different folks than I saw at home, but I also got to spend a little time with my brother, who lives there.

Well, near there. LA's kind of a big place.

I've gotten a notice about this year's DrupalCamp LA, and it sounds cool, but this year I'm not going to be able to go, with the baby arriving sometime in August. Sorry guys!

Hopefully I'll get to go out next year. Maybe I'll bring along the kid.

Does anyone know how to use drush to quiet a crying baby? :)

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Posted by jcfiala

It's been a very long week to me leading up to Drupal Camp Colorado, but it's been a successful and satisfying one. Over the weekend I complained a few times at people not to let me run three presentations, but honestly, I loved it! Really, I quite like standing in front of folks and trying to teach them something I'm passionate about, and I was lucky enough to do it three times. I may not get to do that again, really - with the way the Drupal community is growing these days in Colorado, more and more people will be available to step up and help out with sessions like this.

Technoir Kickstarter

04 Jun 2011
Posted by jcfiala

This is interesting - I found it via Evil Hat's blog.

Technoir is a rules light game set up with the sort of cyberpunk and hard boiled roleplaying, using a rules-light system using tags. There's a Kickstarter that's already made it's nut, but there's also a Website for the game, where you can download the beta version of it.

If you do nothing else, check out the vid that Jeremy Keller made for his kickstater - it's really good.

I'm not certain I'm going to buy into the kickstarter yet, but I'm considering it.

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A milestone, of sorts

03 Jun 2011
Posted by jcfiala

So, I'm at what call 'between jobs' right now. I've got some contract stuff I can do on the side to bring in some money, and some savings, so I'm not hurting. Earlier this week, when the folks at Bonfils called me up and asked me to do a platelet donation, I realized I didn't have any strong reason not to say 'Yes'. I could set it up for Friday when I had some free time and it wouldn't interfere with any weekend plans with my wife, so why not?

Naturally today I ended up having bookending phone calls with potential employers. Life's funny that way.