Serving Words

Yep, I started a podcast (Serving Worlds)

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:11:41 GMT

I've turned my website, johnmierau.com into a launchpad for a podcast of my short stories. I call it 'Serving Worlds'. There's a learning curve to podcasting. It's an adventure. Lots to learn, and the same time crunch this father of three always has. You can check it out there or in iTunes here (or search 'servingworlds').

So, why a podcast? When I have to be goaded by my friends to write and this blog has languished?

First and foremost, I started seriously considering podcasting my fiction after some friends of mine started trash-talking our word counts and write-free days a few months back. Instantly I found an upswing in my productivity. And if I have me-time for anything, it has to be writing. That lent itself to the long-held, half-formed idea ‘hey, a podcast could be a lot of fun!’The more I write, the more I get the kinks out…and what I write ends up better. With the podcast, I’m listening to my stories, not reading them, which makes for better editing as well as bigger piles of words.

Second-uh…most… I like telling stories. I did couple readings of stories I’ve sold and enjoyed that a lot–and a long time ago I tried my hand at acting, and enjoyed everything about that except the paycheck and the egos.
In addition to producing more, and looking forward to sharing what I read, I’m showing my commitment to writing, and promoting myself as a writer. That can’t hurt if I want to be invited to meet other people’s deadlines, now can it?
So the pieces are in place. I’m spinning my stories-all the way to iTunes, which is a neat and surreal feeling. Now it’s time to settle in, hone my podcasting skills, and enjoy the ride.
I can’t wait to see where it leads

Twitterers, love to catch up with you!

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:42:53 GMT

@johnmierau is where you'll find me and it would be great to hear what's going up with some of you.... miss blogging but just don't have the time to say anything I think is great meaning, and I'm forcing cogent thoughts into longer form the few times I can.

Oh, and I'd like to give those fleeting moments when the kids are sleeping and the house is clean to my fickshun.

I gave up my embargo on twitter after buying a used iPhone (cue the heavenly choir) and discovering just how wrong I'd been to blast the thing since inception. If you have one you understand: if you're a poweruser and will not even try (as I was) you can feel free to laugh at me. TO each their own...

So, TWEET my way if you're still alive, if you've got something funny to say, and I'll follow you back. Yes you, in the back!

Cheers,
J

This just in! Caveat emptor suspended: be your own news editor

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:50:45 GMT

A few years back camera phones showed us the London Tube bombings on sites like Flickr, later to be used by more traditional media outlets. Later, bloggers covered the Myanmar martial law outbreak, when foreign reporters weren't permitted access. Days ago, the Mumbai, India terrorist attacks - on anyone with a brit or american passport- were livetweeted via twitter.org and on photoblogging sites.

I'm excited by this. This is how I want to get my news. Unless my little ones are around and then I'll look for those hallowed traditional-media information sources: Stewart and Colbert. But for up-to-the-minute, what-matters-now coverage? If you're reading this blog, you've already got at least one source for unfiltered, unverified information - which news always is, even the stuff you read later in history books. And that puts us in the best, most informed position thus far in history to decide truth for ourselves

This was meant to be a rant about the amazement I feel at having recently plugged myself into an iPhone. About how content is personal again, now tech has made the world smaller after years of requiring intermediaries. I'll write that post, here or elsewhere, but watching the Mumbai events unfold on Twitter made one fact more real for me than ever:

We don't need people deciding what to fit into our news cycles ever again. We have the power to choose what knowledge is critical to absorb FOR OURSELVES. That's a freedom and a power I still don't think I -nor the folks crafting messages or hiding facts from us- have fully adapted to yet.

Now go out and experience the world, with nobody's x-colored glasses on but your own.

going from responsibility & opportunity to profitability

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:00:13 GMT

Courtesy future perfect comes a fiting followup to my cellphone fossil post, Jan Chipchase talks of Nokia's "remade' branded effort to create recycled phone products attractive to the buying produc, thus reclaiming parts from (conservatively) maybe millions of phones, and thus generating a new cash model while reducing environmental bruising.

"Is it possible to make an upcycled mobile phone entirely from recycled materials? One that consumers want to buy? At a price that puts it within reach of the mass market? The discussion is well underway."

Though the corporate giants are now actively discussing ways to sell 'greener' phones and generating prestige for them in order to charge a profit, Chipchase's post is accompanied with images of the owner of a smallscale regional cell repair shop... because the biz of reclaiming tech is already a proven model on streets if not in boardrooms.

Cellphone australopithecus

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:24:33 GMT

Originally uploaded by ibcbulk

Now that will make for an interesting fossil one day... when Wall-E's descendants start wearing fedora's, carrying whips and seeking the clues to their past.

3 days a week/religious gathering/and yes, Facebook

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:17:24 GMT

We decided to pull Nathaniel from daycare two days a week, since Nik's not too busy what with not working and just sitting around the house raising two other kids (joke, nobody kneecap me!).

It's fun to hear thumping upstairs while I work in the basement (at least a few precious months remain in my working at home dreams).

It's also busy-making: this weekend the girls get their christening - given the time of year we're holding it out back to squirt them with magic water under the blue sky. Prior to that, I'll have to find time to stain the deck furniture and slash the grass (read: clover) to a bearable level.

In addition to the work stuff, o'course. And teensy bits of writing, which is firing my brain thanks to new levels of cameraderie from a couple of wordluvvin' compatriots.

That leaves the typical near-zero time for blogging, or evaluating how friends are using the internets (I am continually amazed by its usefulness, and also the volume of spam otherwise intelligent people generate - pollution worth considering on its own).

However I did manage time to do something I'd never seen value in: I oined FaceBook. Oh, how I can hear the disbelief in you reading this, if you know me at all. My reason for joining is not to make use of another social platform but to make use of another protest platform.

In Canada, the Copyright reforms our Conservative government is trying to make into law has received its biggest rebuke from the much-publicized popularity of the FaceBook protest group 'Fair Copyright for Canada', which now has 80,000 members.

80. Thousand.

I joined exclusively to pitch my voice to this protest, when there were 60 K. I will bet more than a few have joined for exactly that reason. I still, however, despise the idea of proprietary, 'gated' communities like FaceBook -- despite any allure that my friends and the much-vaunted FaceBook apps may wear against me.

But, I'm on, so I might as well poke around. I can hate myself later .

J

so what do people think of twittr

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:32:00 GMT

I keep coming back to this haiku-style approach to commentary in a world where anything in volume seems tantamount to correctness.

Are you usung it? Do you detest it? Opines requested.

A short ps by way of the theme of this post:

Few things can be as cathartic as portioning out wtermelon for desert after a long, stressful day by pulling a butcher's blade from the block and burying that rectangle of steel inside the unsuspection melon. Such a nice, soft, wet thunk is made (grin).

Thoreau had it easy, or, Lookin' for organizing tricks.

Fri, 30 May 2008 14:31:04 GMT

You remember Henry David? The gent who went to the woods so he could live deliberately? Being conscious about your choices is even harder in the ADD, digital world we've been wired into. So, what do you do to stay on top of it?

The latest good news from my neck of the woods: my 'work-from-home' contract looks to have been extended until at least September. That's VERY good news because I have no idea how family men and women get anything done when they mix in commute and office time to the mix. I'm busy as hades as it is.

One thing about being busy, is you try your damndest to prioritize, organize, not panic as you see things you meant to do race by in the rearview. Now combine this with impressionable young 'uns imitating your every move adoringly, and you find there's a new weight to your desire to juggle all those things in your life more efficiently. This is a hard thing. For me. I'm making a 'weighty pronouncement' when I say that, and I'm sure there are some folks out there who drop nothing, never break a sweat, and look good doing all the things that come easily to them.

I very much hope these people spontaneously combust.

While I struggle to bury my jealousy of the uber-organized, and join their ranks, I find myself trying two things: tossing away guilty pleasures I can no longer afford.... and taking more breaks. Yes, breaks: stretch breaks, twenty-pushup-breaks and thinking breaks. Short ones, to shuffle piles and identify where I'm heading in the next hour, next day, before the next deadline at work or for pickin' up chillin's from daycare.

And the other thing I'm doing to keep as many tasks in motion as possible is organization. That doesn't mean a new system for tasks, or a shinier calendar: it's the hard choice to STICK to what you say. That's the only secret to every great human accomplishment, but it's a hard one to master, and to keep mastering on down the road.

So I have one list with what needs doing, and one alarm reminding me to switch it up, stretch or clear my head every 45. And the minimalist approach seems to be working.

zittrain on proprietary goodies/threats to innovation

Tue, 27 May 2008 18:32:49 GMT

I'm listening to cbc radio's spark podcast interview with Jonathan Zittrain, author of 'The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It!'

This is a great discussion of 'tethered' appliances - endpoint appliances like iphone, apps like facebook and other access routes to the internet and our data that lock us in and kill innovation.

I have brisk discussions on the greatness of the iphone and how it's in Jobs' best interest to provide innovative software, but Zittrain verbalizes my concerns clearly: in any 'walled garden' the proprietor or the regulator can drop the hammer on our expectations.

To me, his strongest argument is a call for data portability, the same way years of lawsuits have led to privacy agreements and licensing agreements... and a more aware user who fights for those rights, the same way consumer advocacy groups fought for real-world regulation of products.

Zittrain's book is free online in PDF form here

Mesh: msg seems to be crowd sourcing and distribution

Fri, 23 May 2008 14:33:42 GMT

I love hearing people assert that 'hub and spoke' society is an expired mode and that distributed code/social components and crowd sourcing/cloud computing is bringing a new aspect to the way people think about interaction.

Great examples: like how Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -a monolithic, government-sponsored mainstream media entity- is embracing bittorrent, podcasting and small-scale, widespread communication.

Love it!

Mesh Conference

Taking out the trash 2.0, and Guilt

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:50:14 GMT

Garbage. I'm cleaning my garage tonight and part of that is crushing cardboard for the weekly recycling, and I'm shocked (somehow, I am shocked every week) by the sheer amount of garbage I generate.

Right now I'm coming to see paper the way people on their way to vegetarianism come to see meat.

I don't think I'll ever be able to buy a dead tree newspaper again, I feel gross about the free newspapers that come to the door and I think only books that I'll want to re-read at least a couple times will ever sit on my bookshelf again.

I have what I've coined a 'hypocrite footprint' - I believe any living creature has to, especially those of us in complicated human society - which basically means, my ability to ignore things that I do that have negative consequences can only go so far before I act on it. The inverse, I suppose, of a 'carbon footprint'.

I'm coming up to the limit I can soak on paper: even coffee cups are starting to make me shudder.

twitch wibble...

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:15:07 GMT

Spent hours working on docs for the day job.

Word 2007 has mangled them.

Downloading OpenOffice now and screaming at my plastic boxed copy of Office 2007 'The power of GPL compels thee!' but it's not acting scared.

Frak I wasted a lot of time today.

THIS IS WHY I HATE CLOSED SOURCE SOFTWARE!!!!!!!

A nasty QWERTY time sink for y'all

Thu, 15 May 2008 13:27:47 GMT

A nasty QWERTY time sink for y'all
Originally uploaded by johnmierau

74 WPM! Thank you, thank you very much.

http://www.typeracer.com/

WHY LJ Advisory Board?

Thu, 15 May 2008 01:23:50 GMT

I was asked, and it's a fair question: I'm not a power-poster, not a group moderator and I don't seek numerical popularity by any site's friend/link count... so, why DO I want in on the Board?

I won't go into my background too deep but I've worked for a regional internet provider as support and trainer, for BlackBerry as support, writer and in product and service quality assurance, and I write fiction in what spare time I have after taking care of my 3 young children.

I've watched SixApart's open-source LiveJournal engine be outpaced by prettier newer systems, seen 'the strike, seen LJ change hands to a Russian consortium... in short watched it age from a web darling to the internet equivalent of a country in recession.

Under new owners SUP, the annual meeting for this board will move from North America or Northern Europe to Turkey, in line with its business interests. I ascribe no dangerous motivations to that except one: it shows that the user base in those two areas are far from the new owners' minds.

But these are the people I read, lurker-style: and these are the people I don't want to lose. The place is quite old for the web (yes, there are new members and groups but it's the age of LJ I'm talking about) and that makes it fascinating.

Some of my beliefs:
-LJ represents that rarest of things on the internet: a cross-section of time and generations
-SUP can be reasoned with, made to consider fresh options for renewal of interest and profit
-Open ID has no traction, and I don't believe it ever will
-FOSS has no traction inside LJ: it's neither it's strength nor it's identity, just it's engine
-to keep LJ CLOSE to what it is know it today, SUP needs to see revenue

It's often said that the spinoff-Journals are more vibrant than the original. That may be. But we're reading LJ right now, and there's a great investment in energy and time in these hallowed pages: like the adage says: it's the content, stupid (or userbase from an ad perspective).

And those users, that content, are citizens of a nation holding elections for at least one open seat right now.

My degree is in education, my work experience in writing and training. Talking to people on paper or in front of a room. And either way, the best way to reach them is to talk to them from their own vantage point, their own life experience, not steamroll them with yours. I want to find out what SUP wants in order to help them see what the users of LJ already get.

SUP may have the best of intentions or none at all towards maintaining LJ in Northern Europe or North America... or they may want to turn it into a Russian Orkut.

In either case, LiveJournal is here, it's filled with people of all stripes and that is what I want to help preserve, and help advance. My hopes lay part in archaeology and part in renewal--and I would love the opportunity to learn what really lies inside the SUP assets and strategies for the ship we're sailing on.

I have some ability to communicate and explain, and I see tremendous possibilities in expansion of userbase, renewal of some bygone running practices... and frankly yeah, that means helping SUP turn a profit (but equally frankly, in ways perhaps less odious than they seem to be heading).

I said in my nomination request I'm not a big joiner, and it should be clear by now I'm not looking for internet fame or fortune, but watching this beloved dinosaur of the blogosphere now I see it either evolving, going extinct, or being petrified - not in wood, but by being covered over in advertising until there's no life under it. Not quite the same as extinct, but close enough.

That's it. I wanted to have a say in the discourse, so my hat was thrown at the 11th hour. Still, if you want to do some talking on it, please post here about what you see, what you hope and what you fear. LJ is an experiment in the middle of its run, and everybody gets to play schroedinger's cat. I'd love to hear what IT looks like from inside YOUR black box ;-)

UPDATE 10pm EST: Well, as hail mary's go that was thought provoking and fun. (Even as a hail mary, I thought I had a dozen or more hours left to shill - shrugs - never was very good at time zone math ;-)

I'd still love to know your hopes and fears for our beloved playground, if you want to comment.

I'd like your vote for LJ Advisory Board

Wed, 14 May 2008 20:03:58 GMT

Here I am again. Twice in one day? Is this the end of the internet?

I joined this place reluctantly, post recalcitrantly, adore it tremendously. I want to see it stay true to what makes it a thriving community, not to disappear one day, not be closed like Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom was announced to be, once some perceived course has been run.

So it's an instant decision and one I am serious about. I'm jumping the gun posting it here, awaiting moderation to get my name posted in the thread, but life continues in the meat world while I wait so...

If you think you can help, please ask any of your friends to read what I posted in the LJ Advisory Board link--I hope they'll lend their voice as a comment there (which equals a nomination vote). I need 100 comments in 24 hours. Steep and fast.

Here's my spiel:

I'm a new father and a slow poster, but I'm not a new face: I joined LJ for the second time in 2006, after stints blogging with Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger... and that old favorite, notepad/HTML. On December 3rd 2007 I asked in a post: "So, who is this company that just bought LiveJournal?" when others hadn't even known the change was happening. Because I was afraid it meant the end for LJ, right after I returned to the it.

I'm not an easy joiner, because I hate when the communities I join turn into something I don't like, or just plain disappear. But there are enough familiar faces, promise and plain good stuff here in LiveJournal I took the plunge. Now I want to help make sure this community I've joined 'keeps on keepin' on' just the way it has through three different ownerships and an epoch of internet evolution.

THe LJ Advisory Board will help steer the big wheel of mixed interests that will determine what roads this community travels. I want on this board. Short and to the point: if you will help me, please vote for me by adding a comment to my entry here:

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_election_en/24360.html

Thank you very much for reading.

Pressures to commit word yield fruit. And look, blog posts too!

Wed, 14 May 2008 18:19:03 GMT

My you folks do get busy in here. I take a few days away from reading and I'm slaved to my screen for a lunch hour to get through all the LJ goodness! Yes, family and work still reign supreme-have I posted enough picture of my twins and 18 month old yet? And still, as alyays, my need to blog is almost as great a pressure so with no further ado I'll start up again with a rant.

I'll start with apologies and thanks to Ruth and Nicole who posted -and to those who emailed- birthday greetings. Yes, I am less than 3 years away from the joy of 40 now. The reminders were sweet, really (grin). Anyhow, Livejournal stalking is part of what's kept me sane: reading of doggy adolescence, laptop domination (and proper packaging), writing victories and workplace exits... but not contributing has tied me in almost as many fits as the low ebb of my fiction production in these early baby days, so here I am.

I'm back to committing word daily again for my fiction, and sending work out to editors -and as a wordbender for love and profit, nothing is as cathartic like spray-painting the contents of your brain, either in longhand or ascii, for others to see! And in my consultant work, writing and advising a major organization on streamlining the use of wireless handhelds to maximize and mobilize their manpower (agh! unintentional alliteration!!), my brain is becoming even more keyed to the power of transmitted words and the meanings we ascribe to them. Inended and otherwise.

The folks I'm helping revise the rules on mobile email and connectivity for face such a big challenge because once they started handing out little glowing boxes that could show them words from the internet and their inbox, many times more users than were intended to be served stormed the gates for their own glowing box. ... I'll say that again: many more people than were bargained for WANTED boxes that tied them to work, day and night, in exchange for the ability to see more of the world, anywhere and anytime.

Words are powerful stuff, and the internet provides it in more flavors than any brain can soak up. Call it cognitive surplus a la Shirky, call it exhibitionism a la blog, call it the forging of new bonds through lcd's and qwerty, we human beings LOVE to talk.

I'm trying to focus my thinking about that need to communicate, and the opportunities the internet provides to help people hear more and say more, and experience ever more. And I'm adding my voice to the chorus here again, offending your eyeballs with my rant, and with new fiction subs to Wierd Tales and Card's Medicine Show.

I'll let you know it goes.

One hell of a music podcast

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:35:08 GMT

One hell of a music podcast

Whole-hearted endorsement! Free as in beer, audio goodness delivered to
you by rss feed to soothe you and groove you (to steal a line from
another great electronica podcast by Anji Bee).

"Dave's Lounge is a weekly podcast that showcases the best in chillout,
trip hop and downtempo music found on the Internet."

Witness the super-hi-tek control center!

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:44:02 GMT

Witness the super-hi-tek control center!

Long story. It involves collapsing pantries, lousy data capacity on the
basement phone line (where my home office is) and the ability of
children to find wires and tug them almost anywhere.

But still... This is my home data center: internet gateway, routing and
NAS. Is it not the shizznit? (Owner of blog shakes head in glum
acceptance that it is not).

buy WOOD, not chip-board!

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:49:57 GMT

buy WOOD, not chip-board!
Originally uploaded by johnmierau

IKEA surely does sell some great stuff for college kids and divorced
men, but if you have the means? Buy the good stuff at IKEA. Wood
stuff.

Nikki was standing in front of this when it fell, smashing a crock pot
down on her. The ceramic inside the pot shattered, luckily missing her,
and the door -doubly luckily- embedded itself in the ground and stopped
the entire pantry from falling on her.

Again: buy WOOD, not chip-board!

In which I ponder if Apple's a threat to internet evolution, and a long list.

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:39:22 GMT

You can google a citation. I don't remember where I heard it but it's not an original thought by me, just one that I nodded fervently when I came across: Apple's iPhones and iPod Touches are a massive threat to innovation on the internet.

The idea behind this is that, despite being one of the easiest, most stable and clever handhelds produced, they live in a closed loop from the internet and represent a step back to TV in that there's no way to be interactive beyond email or blog-text with an Apple device.

You live in a closed loop ecosystem where new software can only be approved by Apple, and only under stringent terms that are frustrating programmers that want to write newfangled craziness for these beauties!

This seems to me a very strong, sad truth, and represents the same sort of trade-off that exists in any realm: if you take stupidly easy and beautiful and don't think about what else could be, if you let your thoughts be guided by the gilded path you walk instead of fabricating a bridge to your dreams out of scrap you've found along the way, you'll never get to dreams.

Instead, you can only aspire to copyrighted entertainments you've purchased through the gates of the keepers--in this case, iTunes, the only place video, music, soon software, and eventually I'm sure e-literature of some sort, can be procured... And apple decides what gets in, what you charge, and what they're cut will be.

BEWARE THE EASY PASS, take the tech less traveled and more bumpy, I say!

Speaking of which...

As I mentioned before, I have compiled a guilty a shopping list of hand-held gadgets I have owned, all knee-high to a PC in one way or another but just as addictive in their own way. I stopped counting at 20, and left out cellphones so as not to scroll off your screen:

Nokia n810

BlackBerries:
Pearl, 8700, 7130, 7290. 6230

Palm Treos:
700w, 650, 600

Palms:
T3, TE, Alphasmart Dana, M515, V

Windows CE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile:
Dell Axim X5, MobilePro 790, MobilePro 770, Jornada 565, Jornada 540, Jornada 525, Casio E100,
philips velo 1 (2)

Psion 3x

...noticeably missing from this list? A Symbian. I am not tempted by the amazing N95 with DVD-quality Carl-Zeiss lensed 5megapixel camera, but the E90? Mmmmmmmm.

morning commute

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:35:30 GMT

I find myself in the unique position of enjoying a morning commute into big bad Toronto.

Might have something to do with the train, which I seldom ride, lulling my sleep-shorted mind, or the few drops of rain (just enough to add character not dampen my hair or my enthusiasm).

OR it might just be the joyous fact that I only make a work commute once a month or so, and the rest of time I work from home.

Yeah, that's probably it.

Somedays I look at my 3 kids and shudder In fear over the fact I gave up a great day job at RIM for the insecurity of a short term contract doing BlackBerry related work... Other days I feel sure the risk was worth it.

Days like this, when I'm enjoying playing dress-up to go out and talk with actual adults. And all the days I get to be home with my babies in the first months of their lives (which is precisely why I risked the contract, and all joking aside I am a dang lucky man to have this opportunity, even if it costs me later).

And so I'm sitting here on a train, on my way to a monthly-ish meeting with my boss... Over-using hyphens and ellipses with abandon, enjoying the guilty and gleeful sensation of a day-pass from the daddy-bin and reading my book -for a WHOLE chapter in one sitting!- and then logging on to post about it.

And I get to go home to the sweetest family in the world, from mother-in-law, through to wife and son and daughters and rambunctious family dogs.

And I say to you that Life is good!

I still have tons of worries about losing funding for this job, and scrambling back to 9 to 5 even though getting to be Mr mom makes it well worth the occasional nail-biting.

All that notwithstanding: how the hell did I ever do the daily commute thing??

Two hours in a car morning and night? What are we, nuts as a society?

Marx called the separation of individual from ownership and profit - as in, societies of people farming for themselves to enjoy the fruits of their labor changing to mostly workers being paid the minimum a company can pay them to water and hoe company produce instead- a process of alienation. I really feel that now, looking around this train car: not a lot of happy voices or faces.

So I atheistically thank the combination of flukes that have given me this brief respite in my life from the rat race, wage-slave commute madness, and hope I can show my worth/keep hitting the right breaks to work and write my way into a permanent escape!

Rambling post on returning to a new normal

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:40:34 GMT

We've been home almost a week now, and life is finding a new shape for our embiggened family (now with 33% more grandma -- and that's a good thing).

I find I have the energy to get excited about my job, about season openers for DrW and BSG. about opening a book (a new Jim Butcher) without fearing I'll fall asleep at the wheel picking up or dropping off No.1 son.

Also on my mind as I reorganize my grey matter: how frikkin' many cell phones and PDA's I've owned (and how excited I still get about the future of the web on these things). I think I shall bore you with a list soon.

Being back online (with regular breaks from the Home Office -aka basement- to check on the girls) has me whistful of life on the outside. I even took a walk in the fresh spring air! Better'n yesterday when my contribution to the air quality was muttering under my breath as I collected dog doody that had -ahem- piled up while we were at the hospital, or hidden under the white stuff than longer than I want to think about.

But unlike most in my family, 'life on the outside' also means life here, online. Which is why I shall regale you all with this Seinfeldian post about nothing.

I missed you, w0rld!

More (and likely more sensible) soon.

Kiran's view from the crib

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:08:32 GMT

Kiran's view from the crib
Originally uploaded by johnmierau

Yup, it's her 1-week bday too: she celebrated tanning with a view of the escarpment, and now it's bathtime.

Three kids! I love being a dad/dad/dad.

Aislinn's one week birthday

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:02:35 GMT

Aislinn's one week birthday
Originally uploaded by johnmierau

....alas still glued to monitors for that annoying brachicardia thingamy' wherein the breathing is considered optional.

Oh, and Nik and I have decided: she takes after me: she has the look of a real schemer.

Hospitals...ugh

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:28:22 GMT

Hospitals...ugh
Originally uploaded by johnmierau

It's day 5 of our stay in McMaster's maternity ward, the twins needing time to put on weight and master that annoying breathing thing, as preemie's are wont to do. It's precaution more than intervention but still spooky.
Living here with my wife and two girls is an exercise in patience, deprivation, boredom and fretting... most of the fretting coming from the fact one of my girls lives down the hall with sensors stuck to her tiny body for the last and likely the next days.

It's also afforded me a temendously different view of health care and the medical system. Here in Canada I hear complaints about how long waits are, how disappointed people are in the quality of service and sometimes I agree. Either that or hear my fellow Canucks cheer how much better and cheaper it is here than for our American neighbors (add a zero and likely multiply by eight or ten to get the US cost of most procedures or hospital stays here).

Here's the good, bad, silly and ugly of life in this ward:

Good:

Quality of care or redundant oversight creates an impressive and thorough environment for identifying healt issues and designing a course of action towards a resolution. When it works.

Bad:

Many teams split up hours of the day and data of the week to cover the same patients, resulting in no consistent eyeballs building a detailed picture of your ailment and of you yourself tho help them gauge what is happening to you. Instead, four doctors give you four different recommendations, dosages, time frames, etc.

Silly:

As I said every individual here has meant well.... But there have been some odd ducks and whacked out nurses, doctors and students (did I mention mcMaster's a teaching hospital?) missing the diagnostic mark by a wide margin only to careen the opposite way by just as wide a berth before the truth is discovered--or disinfected, weighed or otherwise beaten to death!

Our nurses, midwives, doctors, even janitorial staff disparaging every other department's opinions on our little family's next actions in either PC, outrightly derisive ways or with confident old-world anecdotes - mercifully no one's told my to put windex on a booboo or aime such goofyness. But close.

More silly:

Sheer wastage. Plastics are tossed after a single use to convey the impression of a cleanly environment. Food is plentiful (not all bad) for patients-and husbands-and staff- and guests- and a lot of it gets left out uneaten and tossed. I cannot fathom the tens of thousands this ward must toss out every month just to look good to patients and public. Ugh.
The Ugly:

No internet! How do they expect people to heal without access to the group mind! I'm serious, I'm not even ranting here!

...okay, I got that off my chest. I am serious, but laugh if you must. If In didn't have a BlackBerry I'd be in real sensory deprivation here, complete with withdrawal and the shakes and everything. But I'll tell ya, typing an LJ post out on chicklet keys is an act only for the truly desperate.

Other deprivations: the house, the dog, fresh air, variety in food, my own bed, and Nathaniel. Nikki's mom brought him by for a visit today and man was it ever good to lift the little monster up, make him giggle, get a whiff of little-boy hair before visiting hours came to an end.

But there are some experiences I recommend: stumbling half-aware through a sprawling industrial complex in the wee hours of Easter weekend-to feed a baby, scrounge for food for yourself or diapers for your newborn primate is one of them.

And, for all the faults of the modern hospital, it is truly awe-inspiring when viewed from the inside... Especially when one of the views is the reassuring face of a veteran nurse who watches over your breathing challenged hatchling when you're too exhausted or trained to know how to do it yourself.