the guy keeps defying the medical community. When they discharged him from the hospital with a diagnosis of IPF, they said he'd be on oxygen for the rest of his life. Crappy news, but overall still better than some of the outcomes that had been contemplated last fall. However, in the past few months his respirologist has seen something he's never seen in his 30 years of practice, Dad's lung function was improving. So much so that last week they took him off Oxygen therapy entirely! They'll keep a pony bottle on hand, just in case, but for the most part, he's off the air.

We're tickled pink, to say the least.

On his head side of things, he's progressing well. Unfortunately, he's had a mild seizure in the past couple of months (when he was late taking his seizure meds), but I think that's getting better as well. Fortunately, the seizure came on when they were at a dinner party with a doctor and two ICU nurses...

Mentally, he's all there. A bit slower than he used to be, and a little more absent minded, but I ain't complaining!

Wife update:

Follow her Frozen North Diaries at that other site, or you can read them on her writing site if the sight of the corroding bridge is too much to bear.

Apartment update:

As in, we have one, almost. We decided to start looking again last week, saw a few places, put an offer in on one on Saturday (which was accepted), just in time for janra to head off to her next shift and leave me with all the grunt work.

Most of the past couple of days has been spent in pursuit of mortgages, strata bylaws and minutes, and house inspections. The unit is 31 years old, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, new (5 y/o) appliances, new carpets, new (3 y/o) roof, and new pipes. It was priced fairly reasonably, by vancouver standards, which means you could probably buy a small pacific island somewhere for the same amount of cash. It's rather depressing to see nice 2'600 sq ft houses in my in-laws hometown going for less than what we're paying for 950 sq ft, with no view.

Work update:

For those of you following along at home, I had (mostly) quit my job to go back to school last fall. Needless to say, my dad's illness threw a large spanner into those works, and I ended up withdrawing (which reminds me, I think they still owe me money). Once Dad started recovering, and was discharged from the hospital, I was going to have a lot of time on my hands. Fortunatley, the VP of Engineering for our division is a wonderful human being, and created a new position for me out of thin air. Unfortunately, for various bizzare reasons, they couldn't put me back in the engineering group. They asked if I'd like to become a Field Application Specialist instead. Having suffered from a large dose of ennui and dissatisfaction with coding, I said I'd give it a shot.

It's made for some interesting times... Basically, the FASes are the last line of defense before customer and/or partner issues get escalated into full-blown bugs and handed off to engineering. Basically, we get all the interesting problems to solve, after everyone in the support chain below us has taken care of the basic issues.

Course, the downside is, the interesting problems are usually and absolute bastard to figure out, and the customer doesn't tend to care how hard the problem is, they just want it fixed. yesterday. I have since learned that a lot of people in technical positions in companies you would really hope have a strong technical clue, don't. It scares me.

But, on the upside, I got to spend 2 weeks in Australia (with easter weekend off), a few days in Austin and Las Vegas, all on the companies dime. (with apologies to the Austinian HuSites for not calling a meet while I was there. Unfortunately, I was tied down with company obligations...). It's driving me to the ragged edge of burnout, but I'm really enjoying it. While I bitch about being overworked, not really knowing what you're going to be working on until you check your e-mail in the morning is kinda cool.

anyways, it is now 2:30. Time to wrap this up, and attempt to minimize the amount of my sleep deprivation.