The Misc Channel

Baby Victoria Rose, Born March 8th, 2008 @ 1:43am

travis@lvfbody.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:06:14 GMT

Victoria was born March 8, 2008! She weighted 7 pounds, 10 ounces. She was 20.5 inches long.

April and I had one hell of a day at the hospital. We Arrived March 7th, 2008 around 6am to get the process started. We were already having some contractions so we were very close. Our plan was to induce labor so we can deliver on the 7th. Well, things didn't go exactly as planned, but in the end, we had a healthy baby girl.

So, for those that are interested in knowing how it went...

The night before all of our family flew up from Las Vegas. We were ready for baby! My father was super excited, more than I expected. That really made me feel good. He was very proud to be a new grand-dad. He brought his wife also Everyone on Aprils side came up. Her mom, dad, step-dad, sister, and even the sisters boyfriend. My big brother Client also showed up at this amazing event. It was great having him here.

After a night at Olive garden, we all went home to get some sleep. We had to get up in 4 hours to start the new life process.

4:00am - April gets up.. I toss and turn telling her, just another half hour april.. please. She granted my request.

5:30am - Travis and April are on the way to St. Mary's hospital in Reno, Nevada. The level of excitement, and somewhat fear was sky high in our truck. The phrase "we're really doing it harry!" came up several times.

6:01am - We walk into the hospital, with about 3 bags of cloths, baby stuff, and everything else my two princess would needed during our stay. As we walk up to the labor counter to check, in... we jokingly ask for the "Presidential Suite" and they put us in a HUGE room. Apparently, years before, these rooms were designed for both the birth and the recovery. They don't do that anymore, but they have tons of room, and huge windows overlooking some ghetto parts of Reno.. but hey, they were windows ;)

Our nurses came in and immediately introduced themselves and told us they would be with us almost all day. They were fantastic. After about an hour of having them help us get ready for this monumental event, we realized that we had chose the right hospital, and these people really were in for our best interest.

This was one of our nurses!

7:00am - We are at the point where we have April hooked up to some IVs, and starting getting fluids to keep her hydrated. Everything at this point is just fun and games.

8:00am - Our family is still sleeping. We are doing all the work (well, April really is.. but I am doing everything she asks). The have gave her a pill that helps contractions, and dilates her more. Contractions are happening, but they are week and easy.

9:00am - My father, step mom and brother all walk from across the street. They are staying at the Circus Circus. They report to us that the hotel is absolutely horrible. My brother tells me that when he walked into his room, his bed was messed up, tv was on, some kinds at 6am started to play the guitar, and the kicker was when we went to bed that night, there was a dirty sock under the covers. Needless to say, he was upset about it. Anyhow, back to us; They hung out with for a while, and we joked and messed around. Eventually, they were getting hungry and were ready to jam and get something to eat.

11:00am - Aprils Mom, Step-Dad and Sister all show up. They got to stay at our place. We had a blowup mattress and her sister slept on the couch (its nice.. but not where I would want to sleep).

We had a good time till about three... at that point.. things started to make a change.

Now there is a gap of time where I didn't get any photos. This is mainly because we were not thinking of it. Aprils dad showed up, and we walked around the maternity hallways a little bit. We were having a great time until about around 3pm

3:00pm - Now things are really starting to hurt. The nurses give April her first dose of pain meds. A smile comes in and April is happy. But the pain meds only help for so long. Meanwhile, the family is starting to get excited, but we are not allowing any visitors anymore. April tells her family that its time for them to leave before they see the other side of her. lol

4:00pm - Aprils water breaks naturally. Wow.. I wont go into this one. Sorry.. no pics.

Now, the rest of the night starts to fly by here. They increase her dose of meds that help induce the labor. Contractions are going wild at this point in time. The nurses and even her doctor visit and really help find solutions to make baby Victories delivery an easy and exciting one. But, even meds cant fix the issues that are starting to come up. Around 7 or 8ish, we were having some serious contractions.. they were really starting to hurt. April was cringing in pain, crying at times. I sat over her rubbing her back where most of her pain was at. At one point, I could not rub everything that was hurting. I felt somewhat helpless, but continued to rub as much as I could during the 30 second contractions.

The doctor decides that now we are ready for an epidural. They put in the order...... but it does not come.. for over 2 hours!

10:00pm - we are at the point where we have our nurse having us start pushing. I wasn't sure to be honest if this was the "big event" or this was just a test run to see how things where going. Well, we were for sure ready to do at this point in time.

I start getting text messages from Aprils family. Everyone is excited, and they are all showing up to the waiting room. Text messages fly in with guesses on the time. Well, that time passes. I was actively responding to text messages up until about 11pm when April grabbed my hand, and gave me the look. The look indicated that I would not be texting anymore. No problem.. texts were turned off. Soon after I stopped responding, I started getting worried messages from Aprils mom indicating that she was really worried and she didn't think things were right. I couldn't respond, because I was very involved with helping April with pushing.

1:00am The day passes, and we move into Saturday. By 1:15 or so, our doctor tells us that baby is face up, Aprils blood pressure is extremely high (192/90), and the baby's heart rate is very high also. Our doctor tells us that she is going to have to do C-Section for the safety of both April and Victoria. At this point in time, April just wants the baby to come because she is totally exhausted. We start getting suited up. I hardly fit in these scrubs that they give me. They instantly rip down my crotch when I bend over. Just as I am about to send an update to the family, Aprils mom comes running into the room. I wasn't thrilled with this as I knew that Aprils stress level was extremely high but I understand her Mothers concern with wanting to know her daughter was alright. I did what I could to make her happy, but to keep April calm. She ended up leaving, and watching us push April down the hall to the surgery room.

1:30am - April goes into this room, but I am not allowed to go in just yet. I sit in this this empty hallway.. the sound of silence, and some chatter down the hall. I tear up because my love is going into this room where I cant go yet. I don't know what is going on, and I am trying to keep my head on my shoulders. I don't really hold any religious beliefs, but I sit and pray that she is going to be ok, and that our daughter is going to be just fine. I have had good luck with praying in the past. Everything has always been the way I asked.. .and I refrain from asking for anything unless its a critical situation. This would top any situation I had ever had.

1:30am something come around, and they have me come into the room. My body was in a strange state. I felt like this was a dream. Everyone was working on April. I remember walking by and looking at her being sliced open. I couldn't see anything.. but I knew there was a baby minutes away. I sat next to April, and held her hand. She was so drugged up that anything was ok at that point in time. She had a partial smile... just happy to see me. As I was sitting down, I kept looking over the paper sheets that block Aprils head from her body. I could see the doctor with her arm up inside Aprils body. Very Very trippy looking, but I looked back down with near disbelievef and told April.. SHES ALMOST HERE! April smiled slowly and I whispered that I really loved her.

1:43 am - Baby is here! I see her come out of April.. not crying or anything. The cut the cord, and drag her to the table where they begin some basic C-Section baby procedures. I look back at April and tell her she and the baby is so Beautiful. I am not sure if I was crying at this point in time. I was really so high on life, that all I remember is the snapshots of the two women that mean the most in my life. I snag up the camera... and start to go to town!

I stuck around the surgery room while they made sure Victoria was ok. They informed me that because she was a C-section baby, that they would have to keep her in NICU for 4 hours. Now, I had so much family, so I knew this was not going to work for them. They have been waiting so very patiently so I worked a deal to let G-ma (Aprils Mom) come and hold her.

2:00 am-ish - At this point.. there was no tracking time. I was high on life. We just had this beautiful baby girl. She was so amazing. I kept staring at her, but I needed to show our family so they could have some sanity. I followed our daughter (wow.. that's a new word), to the NICU and found out what it was going to take to get some visitors.

2:15 am-ish - I prepare myself to tell our families what is going on. As I walk out into the waiting from, dressed in my full Scrubs looking like I was a doctor... my family shot up. Its hard to explain how excited I was to let everyone know that we just had this amazing beautiful girl and that April was going to be just fine. Even writing this blog posting its hard not to cry (I am right now). I remember walking out, and saying.. with a massive broken up voice, that we just had a beautiful little girl, and Victoria Rose is healthy and ready for life. At this point in time, I am just crying with joy. Its hard to get it all out, so it leaks happiness via my tears. I remember that everyone was standing around me... and I started giving hugs. Denise, Aprils sister.. is so teared up, and it does not help my situation. Even my big brother is trying to hold it back. I explained to our families that because April just had what is called a major surgery, that they can not visit her. But I can, one by one, let everyone visit Victoria. I tell everyone that I have selected Lorraine to be the first one and I would be back for the rest of them. I put my arm around Lorraine, and we walk back into the labor and delivery ward. I can tell that "g-ma" was extremely excited for this moment. We walked as if we were doing a walk-a-ton, about 20 miles an hour down a long hallway. She prepped herself by washing her hands at this special sink.

--- This is where I get cut off.. because I have not wrote anything on this for months. But, the story is beautiful. Sorry to leave you hanging. You can see that we have had an excellent baby, and a very very supportive family who drove and flew 500 miles to see this huge event in our lives. We thank and love you all!

Baby Smash - A Smash Hit!

travis@lvfbody.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:03:03 GMT

Victoria has been really loving the computer. She has been in my arms since the day she was born while I code C# applications for my clients. I always joke with April that Victoria is going to be a computer geek like her daddy.. but that may not be a joke anymore as she is really showing interest.

Baby Smash, located at www.babysmash.com is a tool I picked up I think off the MSDN network. It uses a very cool deployment tool that will even update you when a new version is available.

Thanks so much for creating this! Its exciting to see my daughter get into computers, even at 4 and 5 months!

Enjoy!

Its a Girl!!!

travis@lvfbody.com — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:33:26 GMT

Thank you everyone for being so excited with us. We are so excited and cant wait to see this beautiful baby come out of her beautiful mother!

I am so in love with April and love this baby so much, and I have not had a time to hold her yet.

We just did the ultrasound photos yesterday and its amazing to see how much this baby has developed in just 20 weeks. Its amazing to think that April is going to nearly double in size for this baby. She is 20 weeks along, and we have 4 more months.

Here are a couple of photos:

Click Here for more pictures and higher res photos

Baby Feet:

19 Weeks along... its still hard to believe

travis@lvfbody.com — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:26:33 GMT

We are now 19 weeks into this, almost 5 months. April is getting huge. I should be blogging on this more often, but we just are so busy in our days, we don’t think about it.

We still don’t know the sex of the baby. Our doctor is a lazy one... we are not crazy about her. She could have checked but decided to pass the buck to another doctor who is going to look at the baby's heart. I guess that’s ok, but it put us out for another month not knowing, and we really want to know.

Here are some pictures of April as of 5 minutes ago:

Some more pictures can be found here:

http://traviswhidden.com/Scrapbook/tabid/357/FilePath/Family-s-Our_First_Baby-s-April_at_19_weeks/Default.aspx

Anyhow, we are very excited. We SHOULD find out Wednesday, but we are a little confused on what the doctor wants.

Charter Communications and their lack of customer support – I am switching after years of use to satellite and DSL

travis@lvfbody.com — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 23:58:29 GMT

I recently decided to stop supporting the local cable company. I don’t think that all cable companies have the problems that I went through, but Charter, the local company in my city (Reno, Nevada) has got to be the worst company I have ever spent nearly $200 a month for.

Let me start from the beginning.

April, 2006 we moved to Reno. My fiancé and I are huge movie nuts and of course, I am a long time network/gadget guy that has to have top of the line everything. I have been a long time promoter of Cable modem services due to their ridiculous speeds available for home internet users (ridiculous isn’t really that crazy, but when you can get 10 megs of internet connection down, and 1 up, that’s perfect for anything you can think to do.)

My first month of cable service was horrible. Not that the picture was bad, but because the support / install / issues that came about with my account were absolutely retarded. For example, we moved from Las Vegas to Reno. Las Vegas has an area code of 702 and Reno used to be 702, but is now 775 (like 5 years ago it changed). Our first install was missed. Not because we were not at home, but because the installer decided to call ahead to see if we were home, and like a retard, did not notice the 702 and decided not to do the install. April and I waited all day long at the house and called multiple times and the Charter people (who are obviously disconnected from what is really going on) said “the tech said he is on his way” but were just saying this because we found out later that night (after they installs don’t get performed) that he had called and left a message (no message, no missed calls).

I was able to confirm that they called the wrong number and Charter apologized. At this point, I am not really upset because it could happen. So, finally they come and install my system. Install goes good, and everything is fine. We realize that we made a mistake and did not order the HD boxes. We call them back and they say they will be out the following weekend. No problem. We wait around.. nothing again. Now I am getting irritated. We call them and they tell us that the guy said he came to our house and nobody answered. BS! Now I am really pissed. We waited all day long and the guy totally lied and wasted our time. They reschedule a few days later (of course, I have to take off work for them to cover an 8 hour period that they may show up). I finally get my HD boxes.

Now that we have the HD boxes (two of them.. one for up and downstairs). We go to watch an on-demand movie, and we keep getting this error message. We call tech support and they try and figure it out and both boxes are not working. I am like, “come on, how come both boxes don’t work. There has got to be another problem”.

I am not kidding you, it took 2 weeks MORE time for them to get out and replace my boxes… which ironically worked (I didn’t think that was going to fix the problem, but it did) .

About 10 months later (not to sure), Charter communications advertises that 10 meg cable modem services are available to the city of Reno. I call up Charter and they report to me that my neighborhood does not show up as supporting more then 3 megs. Crap… but ok.. 3 megs is still nice. I call a couple months later, and get my system upgraded. I think my cable modem was costing me 80 a month now.. but hey, I have 1 meg upstream which is really nice when you work on networks and upload a lot of things (not to mention torrents)

Things go fine for months and month. Finally, I start to get an issue… and this is the start of the issue that in the end, has got me to stop doing business with Charter all-together.

I started to get some really strange packet loss. I had not experienced this yet, but at this point, it’s in February 2007. I call tech support and they let me know that there were some power-outages in my area and Charter is working on them. Ok…. That sounds like it could happen so I let it go. But, the problem does not stop. A few days later, I am still getting 10 – 15% packet loss pinging to multiple peering points on the internet. I call tech support and let them know and they tell me everything is working fine. At this point, its already starting to affect me because I cannot maintain a solid TCP connection to my servers when I am working on them.

Example Network Pinging from my house to my server

Same time, pinging to my old office network:

That’s just the start of it. A few weeks go by, things start to get worse. Now, my cable modem actually goes offline for hours at a time. I start by putting in a ticket with Charter to get a local cable guy out. Charter schedules a guy to come out. Of course, nobody shows or nobody calls. I stayed at home for no reason again. I call charter, complain to them and they reschedule. This time, someone shows up. They show up however when the system is back online… so they do some quick tests and see that there is no issue. They close the ticket. Of course, a couple hours later.. I am offline again. I call charter, they confirm they cannot see my cable modem, and re-setup a tech to come out in 2 days. I wait and someone shows up and of course, once again, the cable modem is working fine. Crap, how can I ever have this thing fail while they are there! By this time, I have not had reliable cable modem service for a few weeks.

24 hour period

Week View:

Visit 2 (when the guy shows up). Tests everything and things appear to be working. I thought it was fixed as he was able to get a full 10 megs of service.

System goes down again. This time I pull my cable modem out of my house and hook it up outside on the side of the house. Still, cable Sync light is flashing indicating a problem on the upstream (at least from what I know about the modem).

Visit 3, guy comes out, everything is up and running (of course) and when he leaves it goes down again for 3 or 4 hours.

Now at this point, I am getting upset with the whole thing. I call Charter again and they tell me I cannot get the number of a local rep, and the refuse to call me back on anything even to have a manager call me back. I Google around and find the local number for charter. I call it, and get a lady. She asks me how I got the number but I don’t disclose it. I explain my situation and she gets snotty with me, but she takes my number and has another guy call me back.

Now, this is where things start to work a little better for me. Now I have a guy who can follow my case history. This guy goes out of his way (at this point in time) to get things working for me. I am done calling charter support and asking for help… I now have this guy as my point of contact. His name is Jason Griffin. Jason tells me that he is going to send a network maintenance guy out to take a look. Apparently those guys are way more knowledgeable about the networks and he thinks he can figure it out.

Visit 4 - Network tech comes out. Knowledgeable guy and really wants to help. He can’t see the issue but does a full test. His name is John Wilson. He gives me his cell number to call him and let him know when it’s down again. He realizes that I have called and had several service calls in the past few weeks and is determined to figure it out. I call him 10 minutes after he leaves to let him know it is down again. He said he would return

Visit 4 – cable tech (john) comes out in the middle of the night and tests at the street. I know this because I was watching Jay Leno and the system went to static. I looked at the window… and I see the first visit from a cable tech whose name is John Wilson. It was down when he tested it, but it went online. He didn’t really change anything, but at least he showed up. He leaves, it goes down again and I call to let him know.

Visit 5 – He comes back and we hook it up. He sees the problem and starts making calls. He cant figure it out and said he has never seen this problem before. The system comes back up and he leaves.

Cable modem goes down again. John has to go and do some other work, so he can’t show up for a day or two. I can’t remember the full story about this, but he comes back a day or two later. He can see there is a problem at the street, but can’t figure out what is going on. The system comes back online.

Keep in mind, the downtimes are getting longer and longer at this point in time. Originally, it was only like 5 minutes of down time, and by the end of this fiasco, we were down for period of 12-20 hours at a time.

The final visit (visit 6 or 7, two months into this problem), Charter shows up with two Charter vans. The techs come out and at the time the system is offline, even at the street side. Just as these guys are talking with me about it, a neighbor comes out and tells me that they have had problems the last couple months and their cable modem has been offline. FINALLY someone comes forward on this. What makes me so upset about this is if they would have done this before, it would have helped with the situation. But, I am the only persistent guy to get this done and fixed. I guess being a nerd does that to you, but it’s annoying when you are trying to use your VOIP, or stream music to your computer and the network is bouncing for long periods of time.

John Wilson is my hero at this point because he replaces some major hardware in two major points around the neighborhood. The network stays online and stable and I am extremely happy. I don’t get 10 megs down like I should, but I get my full 1 meg up and that’s the most important part for me.

During this whole problem, I was emailing back and forth with Jason Griffin at Charter about the problem. I feel like he was instrumental to getting the problem resolved even though he was more of a point man for this issue.

Current Network View showing the problem going away:

August 2007 --- Great.. the problem is starting to come back again. I start the process of making sure its not my network. I look at the modem when it goes offline, and this time is the ready light that is being turned off. I think the Ready light is the upstream. I start my normal diagnostics including looking at the modems event logs. They are loaded with system errors.

I send off an email to Jason Griffin. The problem goes away.. but I never got any email back from Jason letting me know that he did anything. I figured it was just some network issue and it may not be related.

The next weekend, I get online and start to use it. The second I start to do anything, the network goes offline again. WTF! I am so irritated at this point. Instead of dealing with it, I end up driving across the city to my office (where I have 2 x DS3s to play with) just so I can do my work.

I email Jason a second time about this issue and this time I am upset that he had not returned my email or my phone calls. He write me back telling me that he basically is no longer in the dept that would handle my issue. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.. but still he should point me in the right direction. The way I took it was that he did not want me to bother him with it anymore.

The third weekend, its down again.. and this time a very long time. I call and leave messages for both John and Jason. Nobody calls me back at this point. I am seriously irritated and don’t want to go through this problem again. I call one last time to Charter support (which might I say is the worst and most frustrating support I have ever dealt with in my life). Since I have already wrote so much on this, I might as well write about their support too. Here we go:

When you call Charter support, you will be prompted with this female voice that will help you diagnose your problem. They start by asking you voice-recognition questions such as “is your internet connection not working” and then “is your computer turned on”. Those are like so dumb… I know that for some people, they may need to be asked these questions… but for others such as myself and my business partners, we obviously have checked this already.

Why cant support systems have a flag where you can be marked as an advanced user? Then instead of asking “is your modem plugged in” it can say “what lights are lit up, flashing, and not working” and then determine what to do from there?

Crap.. back to the topic. Anyhow, the guy on the phone when I finally got to an support tech basically told me that Charter does not do phone callbacks and he could have have a manager call me back on the phone. I could only talk to a supervisor, but the guy said he would not do anything for me ether. I was like.. are you kidding me? Can you see my case history? Who cares if I am running Windows XP or Linux. I have a Cisco router sitting before the cable modem router and I can see the network is down by the lights that indicate network status on the front. I need someone from our local office to call me back and get something setup.

He basically told me that nobody could do anything for me and of course while we were talking, the network went back up again. Screw it I thought to myself.. I am going to leave Charter.

After I hung up with Charter support, I took a few minutes to un-stress, and then decided that I don’t want to pay Charter for services anymore.

I called SBC and ordered DSL. I was force to buy a phone line that I don’t need because I have VOIP, but DSL requires that you have a stupid number. At least it was only like 6 dollars a month. Their services can get up to 6 megs.. but I doubt I’ll see that. We shall soon see.

I then called DirectTV and ordered their top-tier package with HD DVRs and HD Receivers. They are outside installing it now while I type this story up.

Later that day, John from charter called me and said that he did see my system down and he was monitoring it. I informed him that he should not worry about it as I don’t care about my Cable network anymore. I am leaving it and moving to DSL. He didn’t sound surprised and I am sure he was happy to know that I would not be calling him anymore.

Let’s hope I can get some luck out of DirectTV + DSL. I am way to annoyed to deal with this anymore. My business partner Henry picked up a T1 to his house in Las Vegas just because of the local provider issues that he did not want to deal with. We have only had maybe 2 or 3 down periods of time that were all CO related.

Snap... we can see the head!

travis@lvfbody.com — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:53:30 GMT

These ultra-sound photos are great. I love that April can take snapshots as she works.

--- Note: Aprils Mom: If you are reading this.. we wanted to suprise you in person thats why we never called you about it. You might as well call us and say "I found out online"

Here he/she is as of 8/10/2007

Ultra-Sound-7-30-2007 - This thing is starting to grow like a weed!

travis@lvfbody.com — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 03:15:14 GMT

It is amazing just after one week how much larger it has got! We just got done watching National Geographic "In the womb" last night, and it is just crazy how fast babies develop.

Here is this weeks ultra-sound. Enjoy!

The Ultra-Sound picture -- wow

travis@lvfbody.com — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 03:11:03 GMT

I am just tripping out here. I still can't believe I am going to be a dad. Wow.

April took an ultra-sound picture of herself while at work. You can slightly see it in this picture. On the monitor, it was much more apparent.

Itsssss BABY TIME!!!!

travis@lvfbody.com — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 21:01:02 GMT

SNAP! I am going to be a father! April and I just found out that we are pregnete (well, she is, but I fall in there too).

We dont know if its a Girl or Boy yet because we just found out a couple days ago. This is huge news as it is our first baby.

It is amazing how things work out. I sold my car just a few weeks ago, and I find she has been prego that entire time. What perfect timing!

My mom, dad, and brothers know, but we want to suprise Aprils parents, so we are waiting till we seek them in person.

I AM SO FREAKIN EXCITED!

These crazy guys are going to kill themselfs one day.

travis@lvfbody.com — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:11:19 GMT

I am sure the Dept of Homeland security would have a fit if they saw this. That looks like Europe to me, but I cant tell. Very stupid, but very cool at the same time. What do you think?

Crazy - Free videos are just a click away