It's been a few days (at least I think) and I finally can make the time to post a few more pictures.

Here's a few from last thursday when we left the hospital and when we got home. There were some boxes waiting for us from our friend Steve, and Jen was really happy with what was in side:

you can see Connor's picture here

Steve seems to be better at buying my wife gifts than I am

And here's a few I took last night, her jaundice is going away and we didn't have to use the billie blanket or anything on her (thank god for that). In fact before taking her to the doctor today, just as we were walking out the door, she unleashed a massive torrent of feces into her tiny unsuspecting newborn sized diaper. Six wipes, four hands and ten minutes later we were back on the road. Despite the unholy goo it was a good thing, since she hadn't pooped since before we came home.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a picture of Connor visiting his new sister Amelia at the hospital yesterday:

And here's a pic of Mommy and Amelia happy to be home and healthy with big brother Connor:

Glad to be home, there were some boxes waiting for us when we arrived today and tomorrow we will open them up. Seems like Amelia already has her fans. :)

Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here are some more pictures after Amelia's first night:

The internet connection here at the hospital is dropping TCP packets like crazy, so I can't really do to much online so if I seem a little scarce that's why.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This afternoon at 1:21pm CST, Jen gave birth to our daughter Amelia Margaret Judd:

Both mom and daughter are doing well...even if she did come out about 10oz heavier than her big brother (she was 8lbs 15oz). Her blood sugar is a little low right now, but other than that no problems.

More pictures and updates to come...

Posted by Dennis Judd at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. Go hungry. There is nothing more distracting than trying to take a test and having your stomach rumble so loud that everyone can hear it.

2. Sit next to the nervous guy. You'd be surprised how hard it can be to concentrate when you've got somebody bouncing their leg like they just had their first espresso. I mean the whole time in the corner of my eye it was jumping around. I really wanted to kill that guy....I hope he failed.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't really gone anywhere with Jen in a while where it was just us two, but with Jen's sister in town to watch Connor we decided to run a few errands this afternoon.

Holy crap...I didn't realize that somebody sent out a memo telling everybody to say something about her being pregnant. I mean everywhere we went people were like "boy I bet your dying" or "where you going to next, the hospital?" ...my personal fav was the random "congratulations" from some guy as we were walking into Trader Joe's. I mean, like whats the protocol in that kind of situation? Am I supposed to do something else in response like make devil horn signs with my hand and say thanks? Or maybe we were supposed to jump in the air and high five each other...then turn to the camera and cut to commercial. I dunno...it's just kinda weird.

I mean...these people don't know me. It just kinda seems like we're getting praise that they can't confirm we deserve. I mean hell maybe the last thing you want is for us to squirt out more crotch dumplings into this world? Maybe I beat our kids with extension cords and put out cigarettes on them while Jen drinks paint thinner.

I think just once it would be refreshing for somebody to say "I don't think you should be spitting out more babies on an already overly populated world", at least that would be honest...and then I could reply how we are only having children to offset all the stupid ones. :)

(7x10^9)-2...that's still quite a large number....

Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Only have a few minutes, but thought I'd post on a few things.

- Math class is still hard, water is still wet, and the sky has remained a shade of blue for some time now.

- Jen is scheduled to be induced on 6/24. She'll be 39 weeks and two days I think, and the baby doesn't really need to get any bigger. So it seems kind of weird to be scheduling the day your daughter will be born on...like getting carpeting installed or new tires on your car. That being said, there is never enough time and even though we've had nine months to prepare you can be damn sure I'll be complaining about having no time Monday. :)

Gotta go, we're sneaking in one last dinner out before plunging ourselves into a world of baby.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think I severely underestimated the accelerated rate of a summer class. It's basically all I can do to keep up with the homework deadlines using all my spare free time. Six weeks is simply not enough time unless you already know enough about the subject to the point where you could have just CLEP'd out of it.
Doesn't help that I'm dusting off skills I haven't used in literally 14 years....and I was not good at them back then either. Plus I just figured out that we don't have any mechanical pencil lead. :(

I got an email with the results from the Radon charcoal test, they matched up with the electronic Radon detector @ 0.5pCi/L. Interestingly enough after the heavy rains we've been having the past couple of days the reading went up to 0.7...but I suspect that it will decrease again, and even more so when winter comes around.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

- Completed the charcoal test for radon. Once I elevated the electronic radon detector (hanging it from some string at breathing level) the measurements leveled off at 0.5. It will be interesting to see if the charcoal test confirms that measurement as well.

- Math class is tough. Who says you can't relive your youth all over again....I already want to drop out again.

- Timing is everything...this past Saturday I was at Woodmans to collect on a bounty. I made a deal with Jen that if I was able to sell somethings I could use a portion of the money to restock the liqour cabinet a bit (when times were tighter, we cut back spending on any alcohol). So I'm there and having a grand old time observing the "only buy what you an carry" rule with my arms full of stuff standing in the check out line when I hear somebody say "Dennis Judd?" behind me. I turn around and it's somebody I knew from high school who I haven't seen in probably14 years or so (although we have emailed occasionally) and here I am standing in line at a liqour store looking like I'm in competition for "lush of the year". I mean I suppose there could be worse situations like running into each other at the proctologists office, or if they worked at a gas station and I was buying a copy of Hustler or something....but still, it's just my kind of luck

Posted by Dennis Judd at 07:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday something occurred that I never truly believed would....I have finished Halo 3 on Legendary difficulty.

Seriously though, that means I've played the game 3 times now...first on normal, then heroic and lastly legendary. I have no idea why the game hooked me and got me to play it three times, the last time that happened was with Dead Rising.

Guess it's time to move on to God of War 2....finish off those PS2 games before the thing finally bites the dust. It's so hard so go back to the PS2 after playing on the xbox 360. I mean I still have Blue Dragon to plug away at....but summer class starts up on monday so I don't think I'll have a lot of time really for long games. Guess we'll see.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So about four days after the Radon system has been installed, the current reading seems to have steadied out at 0.9 pCi/L. Since Radon's half life is 3.8 days the number really shouldn't go down much further, so now is the time to do the charcoal test. This will also serve as a good test for the accuracy of the electronic Radon detector we purchases initially. Ironically the test the installer left behind is also the same one the state of IL sends you for free. They obviously have a corner on the market.

So the other number that's important in my life lately is 3.31. That's my current college GPA after my last class I just finished up. I'm not bragging about it, certainly it's at best a B average, but really I'm just happy it's trending upward. Picking up the pieces after all these years and dusting them off hasn't been the easiest thing. Sure has helped to have support from Jen and her help. I'm just happy to see the negative effect of those wasted D's and C's hopefully washing away a bit.

Here's hoping my summer class goes well...now that my English requirements are passed it's time to turn my eye to Math. Math is not my strongest subject, so I expect to get very very frustrated at times, but at least my excessive love of comma's won't count against me in that. :)
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Thinking back about my squandered and wasted academic youth sometimes conjures up feelings of nostalgia, and I always wonder if I should create an account on myspace or facebook. Of course after kicking that idea around for a few hours I always come to the same conclusion....hell no. I mean holy cow...I've owned my own domain for eight freaking years now, I kind of think that if somebody wanted to find me on the internet they'd have to be blind or dumb not to. Hell more people probably wish I'd drop off the face of the earth than are actively curious about what I am doing at this exact second. I really can't imagine half of the stuff I type is of any real interest to most people who trip across my site regardless. God help me if I had to deal with friend requests or glittery sparkle gif's....I think I'd have to have my internet license revoked. Plus there's really only two things that can happen...the most likely scenario is that I'd create an account, maybe befriend one or two people I know on that same social network, and then let the account languish in purgatory.....forever to be neglected and forlorn. Or the other scenario is that I could have "middle school lunch table anxiety" where I feel the need to show how popular I am by Gatling gunning out friend requests to everyone from my landscaper to the boyfriend of my optometrists daughter.

So either I whore myself out over the internet in a desperate gambit to show everyone how popular I am (which I am not) or I basically create a shrine to show everybody exactly how pathetically lame and friendless I am. It's really a lose/lose scenario either way you look at it. At least if somebody arrives at this site (which I've totally created and maintained for...oh eight freaking years now) and doesn't like it I can tell them to go "f off". It's my site and I don't do it for you, so if you don't like the go somewhere else.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the past 4 days or so I've been doing a lot of computer maintenance work around here.

I took my Vista Ultimate machine and decided it turn it into a video conference box for use downstairs. That way when Jen and her mom talk it can be in a more kid friendly area than the office. Also I'm thinking that if Jen want's to video conference back home to see Connor while she's in the hospital it'll be easier. Heck we could just leave it on 24x7 almost.

Anyways, to get it running better I've got some more RAM on the way, and I've also been tweaking the services using blackvipers list. Along the way I also installed Service Pack 1 (which took a few hours), so I think short of the RAM upgrade, we're pretty good. Right now it's a 2Ghz w/ 512mb RAM...with a 32mb ATI video card.....I'm hoping 1GB (motherboards max capacity) will make it run better. I think it will honestly, but even after all the tweaking I could think of it's still at 30 processes.

On my main machine, I finally got around to installing service pack 3 for XP. Honestly no issues so far, you couldn't even tell if you hadn't seen it occur. I think defragging my poor old hard drive had a bigger impact on the system than anything else :) Then again keep in mind I'm not really using it for video games anymore, so I'm not pushing the limits like I used to. Heck, after my AGP video card died I didn't even replace it...just kept using my backup Nvidea PCI card.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)