Travis Whiddens Blog

26 Megabits down – Cox Cable Modem

travis@lvfbody.com — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:20:15 GMT

wow.. just wow.

Cox Internet Speed is just ROCKIN!

travis@lvfbody.com — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:46:51 GMT

Just nuts.

Cox opening up their bandwidth?

travis@lvfbody.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:58:30 GMT

Yea, ummm... I am down with this.

I just put in a Cisco 3640 router with several FastEthernet ports. Going to use my Cisco 806 at my office.

I pay for the top tier service from Cox, but my mom and father in law have the low service and they get these same speeds? Well, I am still very happy with this.

Maybe one day, we will have 100/100 speeds.. or even better 1000/1000 speeds!

Travis

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!

How to get your TrixBox Pro or TrixBox Call center edition to work with VoiceStick

travis@lvfbody.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:33:22 GMT

OK, so many of you may have ran into the same problem that I have had trying to set up a number from the sip provider VoiceStick. My specific application requires that I buy 50 - 200 DID numbers. I did a lot of searching, and found a few providers that I wanted to try. These people at VoiceStick were very helpful and seemed to have the most support for non-24 hour services from what I could find anyways.

Now, the only things I can see being a problem with VoiceStick is that they don't do the following:

They give you an IP address instead of a DNS name to point at their server. If they ever change, well, lets just say you would be in trouble until you found out about the change
They dont have any kind of network fail over option so like if their network goes down, or they cant hit your server, it wont forward to another number
No 24 hour support options - If you are down over the weekend, lets hope they know about it.

A huge advantage is that you can buy there .99 cent DID number, and only pay one cent per min on the usage. So if you have a call center, a number that cost more means you are doing some good calls on it. Lets hope the telemarketers stay away.

After some short and quick email correspondences with VoiceStick, I got the details needed to setup my TrixBox with their SIP server. It worked right away, and the quality seems to be very nice!

Settings:

Now, the kicker is you need to adjust your /etc/host file to include the following line:

72.5.80.116 i2telecom.com

Once that is setup, your system will be registered without any issues! In and outbound work just fine.

Hope this helps --- lets just hope they don't change the IP address of the server any time soon!

Jumper (2008)-- Better then what people are saying

travis@lvfbody.com — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:16:30 GMT

I get so irritated when I read critics from web sites such as rottentomato.com where people say "there are to many plot holes" or "not realistic". the "ending leaves for another movie"

WHO CARES!

I went tonight with April and two friends of ours. We all really liked it. Maybe set set the bar really low because of these review, but overall, we felt like it was a good, adventurous movie. People need to get off their stool and try to enjoy the movie a little bit. IT NOT REAL... get over it! People expect for a movie to be real even though they are walking into a sci-fi type flick.

Anyhow, anyone wanting to enjoy an adventure just needs to go see it. if you question it, go see a matinee movie.

For those friends of mien who have opposite film likings... dont go see it ;)

Sit back, relax, and enjoy a fun movie.

Rambo - More than you will expect

travis@lvfbody.com — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:35:37 GMT

Lol, well, we went and saw Rambo tonight. I knew it was going to be corny, but guys like lots of blood and gore. April said it was going to suck, but she went with me on this one. I have totally forgot what the other Rambo movies were about. After watching this one, I actually want to go and rent them just to see if I was missing anything. The story starts out kind of slow. Just building the plot for the movie. SS is just getting old! SS is obviously going to be the hero of this movie. This movie was FULL of guts and gore. Actually, that made the movie even better! I love when they pull out the 50 cal and I love the use of the sniper rifle by one of the other characters of this movie. April went in giving this a D, and she bumped it up to a C. I give this movie a C+ / B- but its worth seeing, especially with a bunch of guy friends.

Untraceable (2008) - Very cool - Very Technical and realistic

travis@lvfbody.com — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:43:50 GMT

Its not often you go to a movie and hear real computer terms. I am so pleased when someone that knows nothing about computers actually uses real terms instead of making stuff up (like in Firewall with Harrison Ford). I was glued to the screen at the start of this movie as they talked about DNS servers, TTL, Bots, etc. It really did build some credibility to the story. The movie itself was actually quite good. I loved how there are some clues in it that tell you information later in the movie. I also like how they didnt hold back on some things. There were some gore scenes. I did hear something about "net neutrality" in it, but I couldn't figure out if they were saying that its needed or not. All I know is that it should stay like it is now. I would give this movie a good B+/A-. I really enjoyed it, and so did April, and she isn't even a computer person. Worth a night movie ticket and a DVD rental when it comes out ;)

ModernBill - January 08 - Update

travis@lvfbody.com — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:38:13 GMT

Well, I have been quite pleased with ModernBill lately. There are still some quirks.. but overall I am very pleased. It has handled our business the way we have expected. Now, the hardest part is to get all of our customers moved. Our old billing system is so screwed up, that its hard not to have Garbage in, Garbage out. I am waiting on a new release of their software which will include some long needed fixes. They still have problems with Plesk and creating 2 or more accounts for one user. I have done a lot of complaining about it, but we are not very pleased with Plesk anyways, so we may dump it. We noticed that hostgator is running an older version of the software (4.x) and we are running 5.x. That made us happy to see that a major competitor to us is using software that has been "questionable" at times. I am hoping that this will continue to become a solid product over the years, as we are making a considerable commitment to use it and move all of our customers into it.