use Perl

I hate commercial radio. The only thing I listen to in the car is NPR.

But I like music. So I've been listening to RadioParadise for quite a while and I really like the mix of tunes there.

Now I just heard about Pandora which is a music services that builds a radio station based on your tastes. Very cool idea and it seems like a very cool implementation. And it's free.

Oh, the Perl connection? It appears you can listen to this service through the SlimDevices products, and the code that runs that device (and all the plug-ins) is written in Perl! Cool.

It appears the real world has intruded on the PHP folks as one of their core developers has said goodbye, apparently because of things going on the in real world. As our world seems to be headed for more turbulence, I'm sure this isn't the last of this type of thing we'll see.

So maybe I'm a little slow to find this out, but the cpan shell provided by the CPAN.pm module has a cool new option. In the past, I've always done 'sudo cpan' on my box to install things on the system, but then all my .cpan stuff is owned by root. Now, if you run this command in your cpan shell:

o conf make_install_make_command 'sudo make'

the cpan shell will run everything as you, then run 'sudo make install' for the last step, just like you would if installing by hand! Very cool.

If you've been doing the 'sudo cpan' thing, you'll need to clean up your .cpan directory because it's owned by root. You can probably chown it, but I chose to just delete it all.

So I wasn't able to attend YAPC this year in person, but thanks to iChat video and some help from Randal and Schwern, I was able to present from my home office in Buffalo!

Both brian and I were scheduled to do the first talk of YAPC on Conferences for Beginners. Unfortunately, due to some travel problems, brian wasn't back to his home city of Chicago in time.

So on a moments notice, the Perl hackers took the stage and got things started. Then, using a borrowed video camera at the conference hall, Randal and I got a video iChat going. Randal had his display on the big screen and his audio going through the PA, so I was able to give the presentation from home.

Not quite the same as being there, but an excellent way to solve the problem.

We were all scheduled for Monday and my wife told me to spend most of Sunday with our son Aiden and enjoy father's day. I was doing just that when, right after lunch, I got a call from my wife at the hospital and she said she was in labor!

I guess no one told the babies what the plan was. :)

So I did some rushing around to find someone to watch my son and sped down to the hospital. And around 5:30 PM last evening, Cameron (4 lbs. 6 oz.), Liam (4 lbs. 11 oz.), and Grace (5 lbs. 1 oz.) made their entrance.

The babies are in the NICU for now for observation, but all are breathing normally and they should be moved to the regular newborn nursery today or tomorrow. Everyone is doing well and mom is resting comfortably (somewhat).

No problems with my wife's blood work, so we're scheduled for Monday morning at 9AM. So she just needs to tolerate one more weekend of contractions and discomfort.

We went on a tour of the NICU. It's a first-class facility, recently completely renovated. It just looks like you'd want a special care unit to look--very clean, very high-tech--and all of the staff are highly-qualified.

We're hoping the babies will be big enough and not have any problems so they won't have to go there, but it's nice to know they are there if we need them.

I should also mention that my son Aiden has been a absolute trooper through all of this. He's been shuttled around from me to one grandparent to another, and has been without his mom for almost two weeks now, and he's barely batted an eyelash.

We've been pushing the doctor to schedule the C-section for Friday, but things are quite busy here at the hospital. They ordered a bunch of tests, including blood work, and if everything is normal we wait until Monday. If anything looks abnormal, they'll get us in for tomorrow. The end is in sight.

How busy is it here at the hospital? Well, my wife's floor is completely full now and we can hear the new baby music every couple of hours (they play a lullaby over the PA system when a new baby is delivered). Apparently Labor and Delivery was so busy last night that they were turning people away. I'm sure they were doing some triage and not sending away people with babies emerging, but that's still pretty busy.

We're also waiting for a tour of the neonatal ICU. But the way things are going, the babies might be big enough that they won't even need to go there.

The doctor my wife saw throughout her pregnancy is now on her rotation with the high-risk floor, so we are very happy. It's nice to work with someone who knows your history and with whom you have some familiarity. She's also an amazing doctor.

After talking with my wife this morning, Dr. Lele agreed to schedule the C-section for Friday, assuming my wife can hold out that long. Having a date makes it easier since my wife can somewhat prepare herself for what's coming.

So now we wait for Friday morning, and in the meantime we just need to nail down the names.

My wife is still in the hospital, waiting. Yesterday the doctor decided to take her off the Procardia. Unfortunately, he didn't share that with her and we only found out when her next dose was due and the nurse told us.

Apparently, for many women, the procardia doesn't work to stop labor after the first few days. So the doctor wanted to take her off for a while and see if it was doing anything.

Turns out it was. Her contractions started becoming more regular and much closer together and her blood pressure started going up again.

So we talked to the resident and they agreed to put her back on it. Things settled down again in the evening and in the morning, the doctor agreed to keep her on it.

Tomorrow, the rotation will put a new doctor on. We're hoping it's the doctor we were seeing through the office for the entire pregnancy. It's a rotation of 3 high-risk doctors, so we've been seeing one of her partners.

For those of you wondering, here's an update on our pending triplets:

Monday morning we drove in to the Labor and Delivery department at Women and Children's Hospital here in Buffalo. Triplets are considered high-risk, so this is the hospital our doctor wants us to work with.

Although my wife had been having contractions, there were no other signs of labor and that isn't what made us decide to come in. She woke up feeling terrible and proceeded to get sick and get a bloody nose. Since the bloody nose can be a sign of high blood pressure, we decided to make the trip.

After a full day of tests and monitoring, they decided to admit her to the hospital for observation. They also started taking steps to help the babies along if they did have to deliver. They were at 32 weeks and a few days on Monday. That's average for triplets, but still earlier than we wanted to deliver.

So they started with some Procardia (called Nifedipine in that page) to help control the contractions and administered a steroid to help the babies' lungs develop faster. The Procardia took the edge off the contractions and spread them out, so true labor seemed less imminent.

She has since been moved up to the high-risk mother floor to a nice quiet room where she can rest. She can order any sort of food she wants and as much as she wants. So she's now receiving excellent care while we wait. Tomorrow is 33 weeks, and our hope is to make it until next Friday, which would be 34 weeks. At 34 weeks, all sorts of statistics improve dramatically in the babies' favor, especially the amount of time they have to stay in the hospital.

So here I sit hooked up through my modem to the hospital room phone while my wife sleeps. :)