Wow. I knew I was behind on posting, but didn't realize how the days were flying. Been battling the Multiple Sclerosis, coming out of the attack that started on the 2nd and ending on the 11th. Finally getting back to feeling somewhat OK and getting back to work. Then there's the whole concept of being lost about what I was doing before the last attack, and how to pick up the pieces. Tremendously hard, but I'm starting to get it together now, and should be back in the game at 100% on Monday.

Since my last post, we had the IEP meeting for Blueberry. More of the same goofiness. "She's wonderful", "Behaviorally, this is expected with her disability", blahblahblah. My job at these meetings is to be engaged while not showing I'm enraged. The home manager and clinical supervisor from the home were there, lending more outrage as they tried to grandstand. The big news from the IEP meeting was that none of them have a clue about how to address her behaviors. The school mentioned doing a "behavioral assessment", but nothing was documented so it won't happen. The home is determined that Prozac is the answer to all problems. Funny, but the tight boundaries and "time-out" behavior mods that Wifey used here work just fine for her. We've told them and told them, but because we're not "trained professionals", our successes don't exist. And Blueberry suffers because its "inclusive" care by their definition - which means they're going to do whatever the hell they want. And don't disagree or you're the bad guy. Bah!!!

Honestly, I think the emotional rage I felt for the Home and IEP meetings (can you believe I was a Marine?) was the trigger for the latest attack. Not funny either, it knocked me down for around 10 days. On the bad side, I've got to make sure that I build some kind of mental vent for the emotion so I don't end up triggering another attack. The good news is that there won't be another meeting until December. So I should be able to make progress between now and then.

There's good news in all of this. Finally figured out how to configure the products in the store. The publishing product's sales are doing reasonably well. Stumbled onto a project that should be fairly easy to complete, should lead to some short term revenue and have the ability to branch out for distributable sales. Market is in the "used household articles" sector, so I think it has a chance of driving sales in the economy that's coming. Should be interesting.

Everything else is great. Been having trouble with ear wax. Wifey got me this torture chamber device that cleans them out. Tried it once - better than hitting your thumb with a hammer!

Oh, and Razor's moved from nagging about the Scooter to nagging about a laptop! Buy Buy Buy!!! Life here is never dull. More to follow.

One of the things that this blog can do for me is act as a place I can record my MS "attacks". That's what I'll choose to call them. Some of my symptoms will flare up, making my life miserable for a while. Like I've said in previous posts, the physical symptoms slow me down and bother me, but what really scares me is slipping into that mental mode I was in right before I was diagnosed - short attention span, loss of short-term memory and physical / mental exhaustion.

Went to the Skuz meeting on Friday. More of the same, with no resolution to anything. They were focused on getting the signature on the permission chit for changing Blueberry's meds to Prozac. I was focused on getting pipelines built from their side so there was information flow from them to us, using the argument that we couldn't sign the med permission unless we had the information they took to the doctor, and the writeup of what the doctor was recommending. Was mildly effective at it, but still haven't received anything. Anyway, the meeting was moderately stressful for me, and I crashed about 2 hours after I got home. Exhaustion, upper back pain. No energy at all. Spent the afternoon in the reclining chair. Funny, there was very little shakiness though.

I guess the "trigger" was the stress of the meeting. Didn't feel overly stressful though. I wasn't emotional in the meeting. I stayed on the "big arrow" stuff. However, I was dreading going. Had some concerns that I'd represent myself and Wifey to both our satisfaction.

Saturday started OK, but as the day wore on I felt the same symptoms. Usually, an "attack" lasts a max of 48 hours. Still feeling the same things today though. Again, back pain, loss of energy, very little shakiness. A bit of eye chatter in the morning. A new revelation came from looking at the light tube in the HP scanner. When I looked away the white light split into white, red and green. With perfectly spaced bars. Never experienced that before, even when the symptoms were at their height before the steroid treatment.

I'm a big believer in working with what I have though. The problem right now is figuring out whether what I have will be good enough. I figure I have a year today now to figure it out, then I have to start seriously think about filing for disability or trying to get a light duty job. From what I see in the economy, I'm thinking that it will probably be the former, as there won't be any jobs to be had.

So that's the update on my MS stuff. I'll try to mention it in a post when I see the current symptoms going away.

Been having some problems of late with our younger son, 9-year old Chip. He's adopted, like Zilly and Blueberry. Mom was an alcoholic and coke positive. He came with some issues. We're working through them. Chip is a PITA, but he's also the "apple of my eye". He worships the ground that I walk on - to the point that I'm very careful how I act around him. He has an eye to detail, shows patience and perseverance. He's got a wonderful heart. And I get a chance to not make all the mistakes I made with Razor.

About 2-years developmentally delayed, but doing well in his academics, Chip tends to be a bit neurotic. He has about 100 pounds of matchboxes, and is contented to play with them over and over. Lines them up. Sorts them by type and color. Sometimes its cute and sometimes its worrisome. With all the other crisis here, I tend to accentuate the positive.

Lately, he's started to become obsessed with guns. He picks up a stick and makes believe it's a gun. We find sticks in his pockets all the time. He loves the tanks and hummer army vehicles the best in his matchbox collection. Has a set of little green army men that he loves to play with. I showed him a couple of movies (Zulu, Zulu Dawn, The Magnificent Seven) to try to get him to understand the tragic consequences of guns. It backfired.

Last night, we realized that he was neurotically obsessed. Wifey searched his room and found a bunch of everyday objects fashioned into guns hidden around the room. And then she found a Monopoly game piece - if you guessed it was a gun, you're the winner. He had to have gotten it from school. When confronted, he lied about it. Finally told us the truth.

Today, we called the principal at his Christian school. As his teacher last year, she's familiar with his day-to-day struggles and has witnessed his spiraling, willfulness, lack of social skills and other quirks first hand. I explained the situation to her, and asked for a meeting, and for punishment if she thought it was appropriate. We set a time, but she didn't say much. I was hopeful (thanks barak) but skeptical. You see, most times we've tried to follow through with a lesson for one of the kids and it includes relying on others, we're usually left wanting.

But not this time. The principal handled it beautifully. Chip was honest. Apologised. Was hanging on her every word. In love but with firmness she explained the seriousness of what he had done. Told him what the consequence would be. What the consequence would be if he ever did it again. Told him that he's got to ask for help when he gets tempted. That he needs to fight the good fight. That she loved him, but hated what he did!

Thank you, Lord. Tomorrow is the Skuzz meeting. I'm dreading it. More of the same of the CYA baloney. "Feel good" words covering up incompetence.

But today was a wonderful breath of fresh air.

I've had particularly bad morale the last few days. It started when we voted Tuesday using the "early voting" option in our state. When we walked in, I whispered to Wifey, "Watch, they won't even ask you for ID". They didn't. I asked the lady verifying the registration if she needed ID. "No". I asked her (nicely) how she could be sure I was who I said I was. She said she trusted that I wouldn't lie, and if I did and got caught I would go to jail. I don't think Mickey Mouse would have to worry though. Unlikely any one else would be using that name.

Looks to me like years of lobbying, crying and scheming have finally paid off. No, I'm not another ACORN tin-hatter. It started with CUSA. We've gotten too inclusive for our own good. All in the name of "fairness", defined as giving one party or the other strategic advantage in the process. So I guess I could just identify myself as one of the neighbors and vote for them as long as I beat them to the polls.

Yesterday, I got a call from Skuzz, the Clinical Supervisor at the group home ( ICF or intermediate care facility for the fortunately uninitiated). Wanted to know if we would bring over Blueberry's long pants and coat. Told me that Weeble (the home manager) told her that Wifey took them all when the idiots at the home were dressing Blueberry in her long pants and jacket when it was 90 degrees out. (*!#$!*) Told her it didn't happen. Told her we took 1 pair. Told her the coat cost over $100. I remember carrying it in the home on intake. Nope, she says. Weeble gets on and gives me the party line. Their word against ours - again. Their either grossly incompetent or liars or both. I don't have the beer to really care. (Don't have the beer to give you the story from the start of Blueberry's adoption either. Or Zilly trying to kill Blueberry. Or Razor saying he's AFU from the process.)

Its scary. Its not the country I remember as a young man, where people looked out for one another. Where your word was your bond. Where you had the pride and the expectations of others keeping you in check. Where people treated each other with respect, drawn together by the desire to contribute to something bigger and better than themselves. Where truth was an absolute everyone could agree on.

Its not like that now. Everyone wants something - power, prestige, a handout, a good feeling, or things that pleasure self - to hell with everyone else.

That's why half of "we the sheeple" embrace Hope and Change.

Hope is intrinsic. Its something you hold onto. With an expectation that what you hope for will be realized. Change is different animal though.

We're standing on "Big Change's" doorstep. We're all familiar with "Little Change". There's no accountability anymore. No pride in doing a good job. No integrity - in dealings with others or in self analysis. Most people are living for the weekend, content to listen to sound bites eagerly fed to them by people who have their own agenda. "Little Change" sets the stage for "Big Change".

No one remembers or studies history any more. Its only there that "Big Change" stands naked. Trotsky, Lenin, Franco, Guevara and countless others. People think they know about Hitler and Mussolini, but haven't dug beneath the 10-second clips of the war and references they remember from before they got out of high school. It looks to me that there's a perfect storm coming - economic, political and social. If ever we needed character in the populous of our nation......

But, its been bred out of our society. Relativism is the flavor of the day. Truth is relative to the individual. Thirty years ago, one of our presidential candidates wouldn't have made it through the first three primaries because of his immigration policy. The other would still be in Chicago, not on a national stage - a half-black, half-muslim, half-socialist product of an entitlement society.

I'm at the point where I'm ready to put video content on the web. Yesterday evening I recorded a 20 second video, edited it in Windows Movie Maker, opened it in Flash MX, and played around with the settings to get the video window size, file size and resolution that I needed. Exported it to a .swf. Mid-morning today I pushed it to the web for a test. Worked great! Whoops, I forgot the buttons to control the playback.

Ah. I remember now. In January, I successfully put together a video that included (at least I think it included) play, pause and stop buttons using what I thought was Macromedia Flash MX. I had to find instructions from the web about how to put buttons on the video to get it to stop, pause and play. I made a prototype web page and showed it to Wifey. Confident in the fact that I found the answer, I set it aside for other things.

So today started looking for the file on my hard drives at around noon. Couldn't find one with control buttons. Then I started looking for a "how to" page on the web. Nothing. In the old video work folder, there were some Moyea FlashVideoMX files. No buttons on those either. I don't have the $60 full version, just the demo. I'm sure I didn't take the easy way out, cause I vaguely remember using Macromedia and the feeling of accomplishment satifying my "cheap bastard" mentality. BUT I CAN'T FIND THE FILES OR THE INSTRUCTIONS (primal scream)

Ok, ok. Calm down. Take a break. I'm also a "stubborn bastard", so I really don't want to let this go until I can declare victory. Get some cookies out of the pantry (I work at home) and regroup. Decide whether to push on or move to something else. I walk into the kitchen only to find see the water cooler bottle over-flowing into the sink. GEEZE-LOUISE!!! I think I started filling it around 12:30. Its now 2:30.

I do 15 minutes of acting like Clubber Lange in the last fight in Rocky 3. Rage, followed by confusion, followed by the recongition I'm beaten into submission. Much calmer now - I think eating the entire pack of cookies from the pantry helped.

I'm used to the frustrations of learning how to bend new technologies to do what I need them to. I'm even used to not being able to find what I need right away once I have a need for something I've done before. I either eventually find it, or I reproduce the research I did originally to get back to where I was before. I'm pretty patient. I was trained late in life as a half-way VB / VBA programmer. When something got lost or destroyed, my mentor used to say "Think how better it will be when you finish it the second time." She was right, but she was referring to both the finished product and the learning experience.

The problem I have now is that I can't separate "normal" from "MS related" when it comes to my work performance. I've always been tough on myself, rarely satisfied with an effort. The MS has affected my short-term memory pretty well, but I've compensated by leaning into daily manual hot lists to buttress my short-term memory. I use PDA lists for medium and long term things so I don't forget them and have to go through the thought process again. This situation has me wondering about long-term memory. It's been less than a year since I prototyped the web video. Am I having the same problem with long-term memory that I have with short-term? Would this situation happen to me 5 years ago? Am I'm going to have to re-learn stuff I used to know again, over and over? Blasted brain spots.

So here's the rest of the story. I just finished successfully putting up the video, and I have the process all documented and saved. From what I can figure out, I did use Moyea FlashVideoMX files for the prototype in January. I figured out that I never used Macromedia Flash MX, that I ran the same dry hole with it (too much effort to understand how to make it work). So tonight I ended up with Moyea, buying a copy for $60.00. The control buttons weren't embedded in the SWF but were part of FLV the former referenced. Problem solved.

But its now 10pm and I've spilled all my beer. Probably some of tomorrow's, too. But at least I can sleep tonight. Even if I did have to wimp out and spend money.

Maddening, heartbreaking, agonizing. All words I can freely use to describe my relationship with my teen-age son. Here I'll call him Razor. Has ADHD (like me), OCD and who knows what else. Wants to leave home, but he still has another year until he's legal age. Did OK in school last semester, but I think this semester he'll end up failing. Currently trying to get rid of a larceny charge for "observing" shoplifting taken off his record. He's strong-willed, intelligent, lazy and indolent. It would take me hours to describe all the things that got us to here in the relationship. Over time I'm sure that little snips will come out. We're currently living through a humorous "bump in the road".

He has a PUTMA account that is supposed to hold his savings. Early on in his part-time job, he put half of his paycheck in there. The idea was for him to save for car insurance and a car if he got far enough along. When he started the "I want to get away from you" theme last year, I thought he saw the benefit of the account for saving money so he could leave when he was 18. Recently he's stopped depositing, buying really important things like a Crossman plastic pellet gun and a Nerf machine gun. (you'll understand if I tell you we no longer have real guns in the house) He's still making graniose statements about leaving, but now he doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of making it happen over the long term. He's not adding to his cushion, and in fact is bristling that he can't spend it.

He came home the other night after riding a buddy's scooter. "I'm gonna buy one. Take the money out of savings and get one and ride all over" he told me. Seems that in our state, scooter operators need neither license or insurance - for vehicle or operator. I laughed. The putma account requires his mom's signature. She's solidly against motorcycles. Wifey told Razor multiple times that if he came home with one she'd take a sledgehammer to it. I don't know what Razor was thinking about how he was going to make it happen, but we both let it slide.

Two days ago he came to me and asked if I'd help him "haggle" with the sales guy for buying one. "You don't have the money", I told him. "Mom will let me have it". (bwa-hahaha. When pigs fly) With a straight face I told him, "Razor, when Mom tells me specifically that she's signing for you to get the money and she approves of buying a scooter, I'll gladly go with you". As with everything, Wifey and I discussed the coming storm.

Which happened yesterday. He asked and she refused. He's outraged. I figured out that I messed up telling him that I would go with him, even under conditions that I knew would never happen. He's on our medical insurance. Until he's 18 and out of the house, I'm not going to take the risk of the financial damage that would certainly occur if he got himself messed up in an accident.

Now, he's pretty much uncommunicative. Making excuses for missing meals. Boiling under the surface. Wonder what he'll do? He's shown that he'll go around us any way he can to get his way - regardless of the damage he does.

Well, it will take 4-6 weeks for him to save enough on his own to get what he needs to go to the next step. Calm before the storm?

Been doing the "contemplation" side of the business the last 4 or so days. I'm starting to see more clearly what I want and need to do, and how to integrate it. I've finished the SEO testing phase and am very satisfied with the results. The purchase funnel is complete and seems to be working much better than the old site architecture, which means I think the site is making more money. Too soon to tell though. I should have more data in a month or so.

I recognized that I needed to get better at how my blog looks and is promoted as right now it looks bad and no one is visiting it. I'm pretty new to the concept of "social networking" as one of the tenets of the "new" way. I have a commitment to and ignorance of things like site video, youtube, mobile device content, RSS feeds and pretty much all the things that I think will make up the next generation of the connected economy. Ah, the mix of new technology and an aged, addled brain!!! I love challenges.

Anyway, I recently received this book and spent some time last night looking into it. I'm from the "old school" and do better with printed material in front of me than flipping back and forth between a digital copy and where I' m doing the work. Pricey little bastard.

After you get over the "Georgia Peach, Fanatical Fruitier" references, it actually has some really good information. I bought it to figure out how to change the layout of templates (Chapter 2), understand widgets (Chapter 5) and integrate into exisiting web sites (Chapter 10). Looking it over when I got it, I noticed that those topics take up around 60 pages of the 330 total. Georgia references waste another 50 or so.

Fortunately, in my reading last night I discovered that most of the material is what I need to know about the things I don't understand in blog world. Its a starting point anyway. And its written pretty simply so my spotted MS cerebellum can figure it out.

The first thing it suggests is coming up with the focus of the blog. As I think about it, this blog is just a place for me to experiment and vent. I have no intention of becoming a Blogger expert. And since the venting will be focused on a whole bunch of subjects, there really isn't a focus. I'll be relating about the web business development, MS, our journey (soon) and other things that just piss me off. So I guess the blog is just an experiment.

That being said, I'm about to start fooling with the layout of the blog, so I thought it would be a good idea to take a picture to compare before and after layouts:

You can see that I need to get better at this.

If you've ever heard the joke, you understand immediately what I'm referring to.

Back from the mountains yesterday evening. The overlook I was counting on was closed, but the trees at elevation were near peak. Beautiful, relaxing good time. Wifey really enjoyed it. But its Monday and back to the grind.

Just a picture to be able to look up and remember. I have a feeling that I'll need to look at it from time to time just to get my balance.

Can't say the trip was without problems. The hotels were a little shy of what we'd hoped, but the primary selection criteria was "pet friendly". And the younger son made the trip without his meds. Ugh.

But it doesn't diminish the pleasure of spending time together, enjoying the views, travelling with hardly any schedule, commitments or expectations. I love those mountains. Hopefully we'll be back sooner rather than later.

I'm knocking off early today. Although the project I'm working on took 3 times as long as I anticipated, I reached a major milestone today. The details are quite involved but the rough sketch is like this -

Given what's been going on with the economy and my MS, I decided to pull back from local marketing and concentrate on working on the web site. Initially I ran some ranking tests with a newly released product from a vendor. Reviewed the product on the web site. The ranking went well, so I moved on to trying to try to improve rankings on the product keywords for the one product that came with the web site. I quickly realized that I needed to change the way the product was represented on the web.

When we purchased it, the web site was an engine for sales of a publishing product that I understood in general but not in particular. Since the long-term goal was to sell physical products instead of a software product, I concentrated on laying in a framework for e-commerce. Since then I've realized that I could probably double sales of the publishing product while building credibility of the site until we made the transition to physical products. Lately I've been thinking that physical products are too hard. Sales of the publishing product are easy, take little customer interaction, and just run in the background. Its a super model if you can get enough products and visibility to product income streams.

When we re-designed the web site, we just took the old site architecture from the previous owner and tried to overlay it onto an OS commerce framework. The content came over intact for the most part, but the original content didn't create a sales funnel to make people feel good about purchasing the product. I needed to re-work it so I could take a new prospect and walk him through to a purchasing decision. As I tried to build content for the sales funnel I kept stumbling on false assumptions I'd made about how the product worked. So, over the course of 3 weeks I was forced to learn everything about the product to be able to accurately represent it.

Since the product has been on the market for 8 years, we sell to existing customers and they've put up with no funnel and minimal instructions. My wrestling with understanding the product features and grappling with how to generate osCommerce content is finally nearing the end. The framework of the funnel is complete and live. All that's left is some cosmetic work on the new pages and re-writing and re-formatting some of the support pages. Then its on to integrating electronic delivery of the product so we're hands off except for tech support and accounting.

The long and short of it is that now that I understand how the product works, I can start submitting it to shareware sites to drive more traffic. And product descriptions makes sense now for the prospect so forum post referrals and email advertising have some hope of success. Although it took too long, I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment.

Knocking off early to head to the mountains. Things have been so hectic with the kids and wifey's work and my work and the MS that I've been out there once in 2 years. With my teenage son. Three months after we moved in. My original plan had me taking what I hoped to be my wife out there to propose, then convincing her to move there with me. heh. Life comes at you fast I guess, and it never happened. At least she's my wife though.

So now I'm taking her. Complicated by the requirement of taking the daschund with cancer and the younger son. And, there's not enough money to buy her a diamond for the occaision. But I'll put the old engagement ring on her finger again and imagine we're both 20 years younger. The leaves are supposed to be at peak. Hope it clears up out there by tomorrow morning.

I hope you have as good a weekend as I'm planning to have.

My wife says that I should try to isolate the triggers to my MS symptoms. A common denominator seems to be weather changes. The problem is that there are so many factors working together that its hard to isolate any 1 thing. That 1 thing could have been working in combination with many others to produce the symptoms.

The weather here changed from mid-70's and dry to 80 and fairly humid from Monday through Thursday. This morning it started raining and the temperature is dropping. Very shaky from the start of the day, my back between the shoulder blades seems like its on fire. Common symptoms for me when the disease stars line up. But again, you can't tell how everything else plays into the equation. Stress, sleep amount, physical activity, mental activity (all generally the day before) all seem to play a part. Problems is that I've had really good rainy days and really bad rainy days in the past. Couldn't sleep last night again but took benedryl early. Arghh!

Another problem with MS is that you can never figure out where to draw the line. Am I being lazy and just not pushing hard enough? Are the symptoms driving how productive I can be a maximum? Is how I'm performing indicative of normal mid-life slowing or because of MS symptoms? Is it affecting my cognitive ability today? (how do you measure that one???) I'd love to hear from other analytical types that are trying to deal with MS.

Took me long enough to get here and get the first post up. I started a blog called "CryingBulldogs" on blogspot a month or so ago, but somehow in my old age I lost the login information. Typical. In a way though, I like BulldogTears better.

Why?

Time marches on, and I anticipated that. I always imagined that life would begin to slow in my late 50's, but really thought I had a decade of "to the limit" pushing ahead. The slowdown came earlier than I thought - with the onset of multiple sclerosis. Atypical. One incident. But it made me mentally about 85% of what I used to be. Seeing as I'm trying to build another business after selling one 18 months ago, its frustrating trying to deal with "what is" instead of what was or what "should be". Well, no one said life was fair.

The MS is a candle-on-the cake event that crowns a gradual erosion of personal idealism. For a while there I told my wife I was getting too cynical in my old age. But it's more than simple cynicism... the world is coarser now. We're finally reaping the seeds of relativism that were sown 40 to 50 years ago. It troubles me deeply that we've lost our sense of community, of sacrifice, common values. For a couple of years I lectured my teen age son about how the meaningful path to success was doing the right thing. Both because it served the greater good of society and because it represented how we ourselves would want to be treated in our dealings with others. Alas, the modern world is not that way any more.

That's the message of this blog. I need a place to vent. To log the ridiculous, outrageous and unbearable. And there's a lot. Personal stuff. About people whose jobs and self proclaimed image is defined as doing the right things by others. Schools. Social Services. Care Providers. Much more on that later. Our (my wife and I) journey is not credible - to the point that we don't tell anyone about it anymore. We just try to hold on to each other and what family we have left. The goal is now to get through this day, this week, this month. Its gotten to the point its about survival. At the same time the prospects of society, democracy and civic rights has never looked dimmer.

Early in my life, I was fortunate to meet and work with wealthy and successful people. From my observations, the thing that set them apart was how they could stand above the day-to-day and take a long view of both the immediate situation and life in general. To a person they had and attitude of servitude and adhered to the Golden Rule. I was taught by them that the best thing was the "right thing" even if it meant a loss of profit or personal hardship. So far, their teaching has stood me in good stead. BUT...

With plunging 401k's, crushing debt, a weakening economy and an uncertain future for the individuals and institutions in this country, I'll offer object lessons later that made me stop talking to my teenage son about integrity and doing the right thing. If your not too selfish to stand up and look around, you can see folks of all stripes making decisions in short sighted selfishness. Media, finance, politics, industry. Everywhere.

If what I think is happening comes to pass, God help us all. And I don't mean that allegorically, but literally.