It depends on how I have to give it away. I’d love to give some to my parents and of course I’d want to set up a trust for my daughter so she would be financially secure when she gets older. But I’d also want to donate to several charities. Since I was a preemie myself, I’m fond of the March of Dimes. I also would want to help end childhood hunger.

My daughter recently started reading and it has opened my eyes to how much of our daily lives requires knowing how to read and we do it without even beIng aware of it. I can’t imagine what she goes through not being able to read. So I think I would want to help the literacy campaign.

Because our local public school system is sub-par, many parents send their child to private school. Private school is the norm here now. But something I’ve noticed here that I don’t remember seeing in school when I was a child is the racial split. Most of the schools are very much dominant of one race. There isn’t much diversity. But we took a tour of the academic magnet school (our daughter will be starting kindergarten in August), which is part of the public school system and seeing the kids in the hallways and peeking in classrooms, I was amazed and very pleased at how diverse it is. That is one of the things I like most about the magnet school. Not just that it won’t cost us a fortune in tuition, being a public school, but the diversity that I saw just doesn’t exist in the regular public schools. And I’m sure it probably doesn’t exist in the private school either. I grew up in a school that was very much ethnically diverse and I pray my daughter gets accepted to this magnet program so she can experience that same diversity.

So far I think it will work for my needs and I’m pretty sure it will be easier to program against since I can use Linq to Entities to query. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to make it work for what I need. So I’m tring to figure out Complex Types, but like everything I think I’m making it more complicated that it really is. I need to nest my complex types, but specify the column names. I’m guessing I can do that with the Fluent API via the entity that is using it as a property. See below.

public class Complaint
{
   public int ComplaintID {get; set;}
   public Location Location {get; set;}
}
[ComplexType]
public class Location
{
   public string County {get; set;}
   public decimal? Latitude {get; set;}
   public decimal? Longitude {get; set;}
   public Address Address {get; set;}
}
[ComplexType]
public class Address
{
   public string Street {get; set;}
   public string City {get; set;}
   public string ZipCode {get; set;}
}

In the context, I would define the column as such:

modelBuilder.Entity().Property(c=>c.Location.Address.Street).HasColumnName("LocationAddress");

Is this the way to handle this? If someone sees this and can tell me if/where I’m wrong, please feel free to comment. I really would love to make this work. I would like to eventually use this model instead of the edmx or sqlDataSource I’m currently using. This model would be backing 2 projects (wpf desktop app and asp.net). And once I get this model figured out, I can do the same for a few other projects I’ve got.

I will have a lot of work to do but I think it will be easier to code against once all this work is done.

It’s definitely been a challenge. I’ve currently got the internal application in production (albeit in ”test” capacity), so they can start using it and adding data. Thankfully, it was stressed that it is an unstable release and the data could all disappear. That was the risk they were willing to take to get this thing off the ground. The website will be partially launched in the next few weeks. Then I can hopefully get some of the bugs worked out of the internal app while working on the 2nd part of the website.

I am fortunate though. There is a light in all this madness. With all these stressors, my supervisors completely understand the pressure being put on me to have everything working now with no input from the people who will be using the system or the people who want delivery. I’m just expected to whip something up out of thin air. They do know the deadlines are unreasonable for one programmer that isn’t getting any input or direction.

This understanding makes it all seem not so bad. To have that backing from my supervisors is a Godsend, really. So when I don’t produce results as fast as TPTB want them, it’s not on my shoulders. They know I’m working as fast as I can while also trying to be as thorough and as good as I can. Too fast can be sloppy and result in a really bad situation.

I am truly grateful to have supervisors  who understand…many do not as they are not developers themselves. Some of mine aren’t either, they are engineers, or business folk. But they understand and that makes my working environment so much better to have them on my side. I’m very lucky to be working where I am.

We just got our daughter a play set for the backyard. Two swings, a see-saw, a rock wall, a slide and monkey bars. It is set up right next to her playhouse. I see many summer weekends being spent in our backyard this year. I am so excited, because now that she’s 4, she definitely needs to spend more time outside rather than sitting in front of the tv. This is the perfect way for her to do that, because I don’t have to drive and take her to some big, open, playground where I’m constantly paranoid she’ll disappear.

This is so much better. I can get stuff done at home while she plays in the backyard. I can sit out there and spin, or knit, or read a book and not worry. I don’t have to have eyes on her every second that she’s out there playing. We don’t have to schedule playtime at the park, because she can just walk outside. I can still see her while I’m cooking dinner, or just cleaning up the kitchen.

For her, it’s awesome fun. For me, it’s freedom to let her play and less worrying for me. Good all around.

I can’t see. My teeth are falling out. These are the things I dream about the most. But the dream isn’t always the same. The dream can be about anything at all, it just happens that I can’t see what’s going on. I struggle to see and it’s like a pinpoint in the dark. I squint and squint, but nothing helps.

Another odd event that occurs in my dreams is losing my teeth. They literally fall out of my mouth. It’s the strangest thing. No knocking them out, or hitting my mouth on something. They just come out.

They say that dreams are reflections of your inner most fears. That they reflect what stresses you’ve had that day, or they reveal your inner most desires. I’m not sure. I guess I should probably look it up and see what the “experts” say my dreams mean. I just know that it sure is nice when I wake up from those kind of dreams and realize my sight and my teeth are all intact.

I think that it is slowing happening. She cries when he leaves for work. She gets super upset when she doesn’t wake up in time to give him a hug and a kiss before he leaves (he has to be at work at 6am). She wants daddy to help with stuff. And I’m totally fine with all that. What really bothers me though is that she has started refusing to do what I tell her. This is very frustrating. Bedtime is a nightmare because she just doesn’t listen, unless her daddy gets involved. But it’s not just bedtime. It’s everything. She even hits me when she gets mad. I’m trying to hard to have more patience and not yell, but sometimes it’s so hard when she just completely ignores me.

This too shall pass, but I feel like I’m now the bad parent, when not too long ago, I was the good parent who could do no wrong.

My dad and sister were so heartbroken that I’d shunned them when they had done so much to help get the house ready. And they had come all that way to share in the joy of a new family member. But I treated them so horribly that they left the next day, instead of staying and enjoying the new baby. To this day, I still cry and feel so guilty whenever I think of how badly I behaved. I barely remember them being around, because they were there so briefly and for part of the time I was still not aware of my surroundings because of the drugs.

My husband doesn’t understand that part of our family. We gather and experience everything together. My family wasn’t judging his parenting skills. They were admiring the new baby.

If I could do it all again, I would do so many things differently, from the moment my water broke to several weeks after the baby was born. But most importantly I wouldn’t push my family away at such an important time, just to quell my husband’s insecurities. I don’t think I’ll ever get past the guilt and regret for the way I treated them.