Round Two: accepting the challenge

Last year around the beginning of March began a neat time in my life, one of the times when I was really excited about something. That time opened up doors for me, teaching me a bit of Java and some Python and that I can do a lot on an hour a day.

That period ended about June 1st even though I didn’t realize it had ended until a few months later and didn’t fully recognize it until perhaps last December. I am really glad I took the challenge that I did take. I learned a lot and I think I could do a much better job the second time around on the same project.

Today I read a comment on a Paul Graham essay that rang out as a challenge. Here it is:

I worked for startups all through my 20s, but now at 37, I, I find myself up against point #9.

9. Family to support

I’d love to found a startup, but having a wife, two wonderful kids, and a $500K mortgage give you a very different perspective on the startup lifestyle.

I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and they are encouraged (forced?) to maintain a reasonable life/work balance, (The latter is probably the hardest to achieve; a startup requires an almost monomaniacal focus).

Well, I’m going to be 30 in less than a week. I have 5 children and a mortgage and I’m planning to complete a PhD. I want to publish my intention here to

1. continue to take great care of my family,
2. continue to progress on my degree and
3. start a company that I can be proud of.

I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t.

I take this comment and others like it as a challenge and, having conferred with my wife and having prayed, I accept the challenge.

So here begins round two. I made a few mistakes in round one. Perhaps I can avoid them this time through.

1. My startup was a cool idea rather than something that I care about enough to sacrifice for.
2. I delegated my commitment to others. What I mean is that as I progressed I ran into things I didn’t want to do. Rather than stay committed to making sure those things would happen I found others and hoped they would make the things happen. The delegation wasn’t the problem so much as the relaxation of the commitment to make sure that they actually happened.
3. There came a time when I started focusing on tools instead of on producing results. Tools are important. But if you are going to do anything results have to be paramount.
4. I didn’t talk to my target audience. I produced a product that I intended to sell to a certain group without ever actually talking to that group.

I’ve considered a lot of options. I can quit graduate school and start working. That doesn’t feel right at this point. I can stay at graduate school and focus on it alone. Actually, for some reason I can’t. I just can’t seem to trust myself that graduate school right now is an adequate use of my time and my talents. Or I can go for it.

So I’m going for it. Wish us luck.

Inkscape

Physicists end up doing a lot of writing and presenting. It is fairly well accepted that something written by a considerate physicist should not only have text but should also have lots of nice diagrams and equations. Some would argue that a physicist making a presentation should have just about no text. The more theoretical ones would then ask for nothing but equations, charts, and diagrams. The more practical ones would maybe allow one or two equations but then ask that all of the rest of the talk be made up of charts, pictures and diagrams.

I’ve been using tools like OpenOffice, Windows Office, and LaTeX to make my diagrams. But I see these beautiful diagrams all the time in presentations and publications that tell me I’ve got to find something better. So I’ve asked around a bit and looked around a bit and no one has been able to give me an inexpensive answer: the guys who make the nice diagrams are all using Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw.

Well, I think I’ve finally found an open source answer to Adobe and Corel. Inkscape is one of the cooler programs to hit the planet. It is vector based and powerful. It is layered and has all kinds of operations and transformations that can be performed on different visual objects or groups of objects.

Simple interfaces are all the rage right now with every person wanting to be like Google. I like simplicity. But I have to say that Inkscape is more fun than simplicity. When you begin using it you will probably have to stare at it awhile before you can do anything cool. You will wonder why there are only four types of shapes to draw, squares, stars, and circles, and spirals. Open up a couple of the tutorials under the help button, though, and I think you may begin to fall in love. Transforming the star object alone may keep you entertained for 10s of minutes. Incscape is fairly intuitive and in some ways it is simple. But a better discription is that it is rich and deep. There are a lot of tricks to learn in there.

And then, after you feel that you are starting to get familiar with things, press Ctrl+Shift+X and boom! You have opened up the hood and have direct access to the XML format of your document in editable form.

Anyway, it’s free, powerful, and fun. Check it out.

Doug

Our bags are packed, we’re going home.

The midwife came and checked on Gina and found all to be clear.  It happened to be Ginger, who was the one who delivered Lily.  So we celebrated together for awhile and noted how well things had gone and how blessed we were.  She said that she had been really touched by Gina’s willingness to follow instinct rather than fear and to decide to go home rather than have a C-section and by how well things had turned out.  She also said that when Lily was born she had her cord checked to determine oxygenation and the gas ratios were right on target.  That meant that even through the toughest times Lily was alright and getting all the oxygen she needed.

Lily is nursing happily as I type.  She went down from 8 lb 7.8 oz to 8 lb 1 oz like a normal baby waiting for her mother to fill up.  Last night she had her first wet diaper, which the nurses say means she had probably started to get some fluid.  Gina is remarkably cheerful and seems to be doing great physically.

So, I guess I’ll put the computer away.  Wow, what a couple of days.

Love,

Doug

Some pictures

I promised pictures. At the hospital we are cut off from sites like PhotoBucket, Flickr, etc. But WordPress can hold a few pictures so here they are (note, Lily is in every single one of these. She has dark fine hair and swollen eyes and a round pumpkin head. Her eyes are those dark baby eyes. She’s long and calm and a good little nurser. Anyway, here she is.).

Mother and child

Lily’s profile

Lily

Happy Grandma

Oldest and Youngest

Biggest and Smallest

A Delighted Brother

Three Youngest

Four kids and a baby

Lily’s got a name

Drumroll . . .

Lily Elizabeth Bradshaw

We think it’s beautiful.  And it allows for about 20 nicknames.  And if she wants she can call herself Lil E. Bradshaw.  And there are a whole lot of Elizabeths in Lily’s ancestry.

More about Lily

8 pounds, 7.7 oz.

21.25 inches

born at 22:37 on March 22nd 2007 in at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque New Mexico

We don’t know the middle name for sure yet.

About Lily

She’s a lot bigger than they thought.

She’s pretty purple but getting pinker.

She has a nice little cry.

Lily is out!!!!!!!

I saw the head.

Pushing again.

“The cervix went bye bye and the baby came down.”  “I think this time will do it.”

By “this time” Ginger, our midwife, meant “this set of contractions and pushing combined.”

Scissors and tools and papers and everything are ready.  Gina is still hooked up to Oxygen and IV.