Moved

We are pretty much settled into our new place. It just feels like it has a lot more space, and the lighting is a lot better. The only drawback is that it is on the third floor, though because of that I have lost about 5-7 pounds, so it may not be a big drawback after all.

I thought I would have time this week, but there are just too many things to do. Ryuki is getting bigger by the day, but he still will wake us up in the middle of the night. Maybe once he settles into a regular schedule then I can get something done with this site.

Last Day

Today was the last day of classes before finals. This semester has probably been the most challenging I have ever taken. In terms of material, I would say that 90% of what I learned this semester were things that I had never seen before. That plus a new baby in the house to add more stress in my life nearly cost me a good GPA. As it is, I'll be lucky to get a 3.0 average, but maybe if I do really well on the finals I can pull it up a little. At least I can say that I learned a lot. The farther I get along, the more comfortable I get with writing my own programs and designing circuits etc. Computer Engineering really is a great major if that is what your into, though I would definitely discourage anybody from going into it because they think they can get a good job from it. It's just too much work unless you love it.

Thanksgiving Break

These last couple of weeks have been the hardest I can remember in a long time. Multiple midterms on the same day, projects due several times a week, and just general stress all around. Plus we are starting to pack for when we move in December, so our already small apartment is getting cramped with boxes everywhere. But now finally Thanksgiving has come and the end is in sight.

As a side not, google has decided to list this page again, probably because of the extra pig entry I added. I have no time now, but maybe after Christmas I'll be able to get up a couple of specific pig pages with some pictures of my pigs and what not. Actually, I may not be able to post again till then, but you never know.

Gmail Invites

I recently had a friend who gave me an invite to gmail. It seems pretty good, though it does take some getting used to the interface. Anyway, after a week or so I now have an option to invite friends etc, but who to give it to? I only have six. I guess it will play itself out over the next few days.

Half Way There

I think this counts as half way through the semester. There have been way to many things due this week, and I just barely finished them all yesterday. Finally I have a little bit of time to actually just do nothing, or blog, which is close to doing nothing.

I did find out that I am listed under google, just type in ~amp76 and it will show up a ways down, but they don't have it cached or anything. On another google note, I was reading a press release from google, and I found out they just acquired keyhole. It's a pretty sweet program for exploring the world, I'm still playing with it as we speak. I guess that shows you how much free time I have.

Google Backstabbing

I feel betrayed, after all my excitement about being on google, now I can't find a reference to the site anywhere, not even with specific phrases from the site. I've heard of this happening, but I can't figure out why this site. Anyway, I guess I'll have to actually put content specific pages up in order to keep the listing.

Fellow Pink Piggers

I didn't know there were so many other people out there interested in pink pigs. After seeing all the traffic come through, I felt I needed to explain a little about where the name for this site comes from. In the future, there will be a link through the navigation above to all my pig pages.

I don't remember when I received my first pig, but I must have been hooked soon after. I have somewhere around 20-40 different pigs. They range from stuffed animals, collectible's and my favorite bath toys! Someday I will have all their picture up in a gallery specifically for them.

My favorite pig is Wally, one of the aforementioned bath toys. He came to me as a birthday present from my oldest sister while I was still in high school. I don't know why, but I ended up taking him with me everywhere I went. He was actually part of a threesome, but Quietus, and Hoek only came along occasionally. Wally was quite popular with the girls, and that may have contributed to him being brought along all the time.

Anyway, if after reading this you feel scared and think I'm a little psycho, that's fine, just don't think any less of the piggies.

Google Listing

I'm on Google!!! I was just reading up on some material on how to optimize for search engines, and I realized I hadn't checked in a while, so I typed in "Japanese Pink Pigs" and there I am, number 1. I didn't expect anything like this to happen for some time. Yea!

New Material

Whenever I think about blogging, I always think about what I am going to write. Generally this ends up being something that has happened recently (see previous entries). I don't think this is particularly bad, but then again it is probably particularly boring to anybody but me. So the dilemma arises, what to write about? Yesterday it hit me. As I was installing a NES emulator on my Samsung i700 I realized that I had a lot of useless information that might actually be interesting.

This revelation has given me hope about actually being able to build a site that somebody might actually want to visit. A slim hope mind you, but you never know. Soon you might actually see some of the navigation above taking effect, but it is going to be slow going for a while until school lets up a bit.

Note:
The i700 info above is from pdaphonehome.com, and if your interested in a pda/phone combo it is the definitive source for information.

Two months already

Whenever anyone's asks me how old Ryuki is, I keep on saying a month and a half, even though two weeks have passed since then. I don't know why exactly, but it's as if my brain freezes Ryuki at whatever age he is at and can only remember that age even though it still recognizes the passing of weeks. Now I think I've got down that his is two months old, but I'll probably tell everyone that until he's four months old.

BYU had a good game Sat. I was surprised to see then actually running the ball instead going for 50 yd bombs every other play. It was a little tense at the end, but when Colorado State tried to go for it on 4th and 8 and missed, it was pretty much all over. It was nice to see them win especially after the one point loss last week.

I've changed the navigation above to more accurately reflect what will someday be there, but as you've probably noticed, it doesn't connect to anything yet. I've got to work out a PHP template to write all my pages on, and I may just store them all in a MySQL database to prove to myself that I can, though I've heard that that doesn't go too well with the search engines, but like I'm listed anyway.

News Junkie

I've been obsessed with news lately, and I'm not entirely sure why. It started soon after Ryuki was born, but I'm not exactly sure when. It hits me most often as I'm driving to and from work, though I have found myself watching CNN for hours on end as well.

I use to listen to music whenever I went anywhere, but lately I always tune in to news programs to find out what is happening in the world. Maybe it's a father thing, where I feel I have to learn what is happening in the world in order to protect my family. That sounds most likely, but it good have something to do with the elections coming up. Then again I've never really been interested in politics. Anyway, I suppose I've changed from what I used to be, and I don't mind being different. I would certainly rather be able to tell you what the latest developments in the Presidential race are than what the newest pop hit is. That said, I think most of the people I regularly associate with wouldn't be interested in all this new found knowledge I come by everyday as I listen and watch the news.

Anyway, maybe it's the effect of not having to work nights anymore. Mako and I use to do laundry for my Dad to supplement our income. When Ryuki was born, it became a practical impossibility to continue doing it with school and a new baby. So I can finally spend my evenings doing something productive like watching TV for hours on end.

There are some really interesting shows that have come on lately, my favorite being "Lost". It almost feels like it is going to become a Jurassic Park kind of adventure series, but I could be wrong. We'll see.

Freezing Fingers

I wasn't really sure what to write on, so I thought I would start with the fact that the cooler here where I work is really whacked. There are two set of cubicles, and on one side the temperature is perfect, but on my side it has to be close to sub zero temperatures. This is mostly felt in my fingers as I have to type to work, and it isn't really practical to wear gloves.

Despite this, I was actually able to accomplish alot today. I finished my grammar parser that I was worried was going nowhere. I had around 20 classes that were all supposed to something slightly different, but they were all dependent on each other so I couldn't do any testing untill I finished them all. So I just tried to program as well as possible and prayed that it would work at the end. It turned out ok and only required an hour or so of debugging.

I'm still working on getting more content for this site, as I have been told that not everyone in the world wants to read about my woes and life, but who has time with school, work, and a new baby. I am getting a better idea about what I want on here, and I may soon add a Japanese version that Mako will maintain. Until then, enjoy.

Need... Sleep... zzzzzz

Ryuki's has not been very accommodating lately. He sleeps great when we go somewhere, but about the time we put out the lights and decide to go to sleep, he decides that he doesn't want to sleep by himself in the dark. It's been a long week.

If we put him in bed with us, he sleeps like a rock. This is probably what we are going to do for the next little while, because at least this way we can get in some sleep, but we will need to get him sleeping by himself at some point.

Somehow I've managed to keep up with school. Most of my homework is done during class on the day it's due. The funny part is I'm getting 90% - 100% on them with minimal effort. I don't know if that means I'm just really naturally good at these subjects or that they are just really easy. I guess we'll find out when mid-terms come.

I put up a menu that doesn't do much right now, but look neat. Some of the items will actually link back to the authors pages at youngpup.net. It's a pretty good site, especially if your looking for nice scripts like the menu above. I think I'll leave it at that today, and get on to my cs236 homework of writing a grammar parser.

Things Calm Down

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. School seemed to be trying to kill me with all the homework, and work is mixing up our organization structure and the projects we are working on. But everything is pretty much set now, and I can return to sanity.

Ryuki's doing good, maybe too good. We use to worry about putting him to sleep in the other room, because he never really cried, just kinda wimpered and such. But now he lets us know when something is wrong, or when he just doesn't want to be left alone. It's gets tiring after awhile, especially at 4:00am, but there's no getting upset at him when he's sleeping, he just has the cutest face when he sleeps..., if only he would do it more.

Mako's parents pitched in and got us a sweet new camcorder. It's the Panasonic pv-gs200 for those of you who want to know, and is really great. It has 3 ccd's, SD card support and can also function as a web cam; these are just some of the many of my favorite features. To read a good review and see some prices check out dvspot as they were helpful in making a decision. I'll have to see if I can get some clips up, and I still need to get Ryuki's pictures up, but I'm at work right now, and that will have to wait till later.

I think I'm finally in control of my classes. It was scary at the start there, I thought I was way in over my head, but after a couple of homework assignments, and one of only a few 100% on a quiz in electronics, I think I might be able to make it through this semester. Now if only BYU's football team could get their game going. I don't think it's going to happen this year, but here's hoping.

School

School started yesterday, and was for the most part uneventful. I was slightly ticked off when I realized that Math 334 which I had signed up for, had a pre requisite of Math 343. Really intuitave, right. The lower numbered courses are the one needed before the higher ones? Not here at BYU. Anyway, I was able to make the change in record time, and only missed ten minutes of the class I was actually supposed to be at.

There's going to be a lot of homework, though, and I may not get too many entries in here. Although, I do work till 5:30pm now on Tue's, and that seems to give me a little free time here and there, so you never know. As an update to the previous work entry, I was able to write part of a parser that fixed the subscript problem. It was enough to save me hours of work, but it certainly won't jump through hoops for me unless I through them through. Still, it's a heck of a lot better than handcoding 150+ questions in html.

I'm also still working on getting navigation up, but it's not a high priority right now. I'll probably get a gallery of Ryuki's pictures thus far done first, and that should give me a little incentive to link into it. 人生ってこんなもんか？

Day off?

Well, I guess technically it is now Sunday, but I intended to write this on Sat., my day off. Only thing is, there being only one car between me and Mako, and because I have to use it during the week, all the things that Mako need to do happen on Saturday. This will be changing next week once school starts and I don't work everyday, but it was a long day. Throw a new infant into the mix, and you realize why my free time for Sat. doesn't start until Sun. morning.

I was thinking today of how I had lost about 8-10 lbs since Ryuki was born. I don't think it has anything to do with the stress and what not, though I could easily be wrong, but I think it all resides on Mako's cooking. There is nothing, and I mean nothing like genuine Japanese cooking. Even when I try to make the same dish with the same recipe and ingredients, it still doesn't taste as good as when Mako makes it. This is why I lost weight, because Mako couldn't cook, and I don't go back for seconds on my own cooking.

It reminds me of two years ago when we first met. I was about 170, could bench press a max of 200, was working out three times a week, and was pretty much in the best shape of my life. My one weakness was that I had never really had a girlfriend, much less a girlfriend who could cook. So, after the first month from when I met Mako, we started seeing each other every day and that was the beginning of the end.

I knew I should be working out, but ask yourself which you prefer; 2 hours sweating with heavy weights and nothing but a nice shower to look forward to, or a day with a pretty Japanese girl and endless possibilities. Not too hard a decision if you ask me.

I don't mind that I got fat, but when I passes the 100 kilo mark (about 220 lbs for you non-metric types), I got a little concerned. I'll have to start doing something soon, because Mako has started cooking again.

Pig talk for the day is that I've finished all the graphics I'm going to change for a while, but I still need to implement in a navigation menu to link to static pages that don't exist yet, but it feels a lot easier to get things done with Blogger, so it could be sooner than I think.

Baby Schedule

There is no way to maintain a schedule when you have an infant. I just woke up from hours of sleep with Ryuki and Mako. We had just planned to rest for a couple of minutes and then give him a bath, but he didn't complain or make much noise, so of course we just slept until he did, not realizing how long that was going to be. So here it is midnight and we are all rested up. School starts next week, and I have to have some kind of schedule in place, then again, I suppose I could always do homework in the middle of the night.

I have some pretty intense courses this semester. Electrical Engineering 313, an advanced analog electronics design course is probably going to be the hardest but the funnest as well. Elementary Differential equations and Discrete Mathmatics in Computer Science just don't sound as exciting, but you never know.

Work Woes

This is my second to last day of full time work before school starts up again next Mon. Naturally I would be hit with the biggest project I've ever seen since coming here.

I have to code up this Chemistry course that is just reeking with special characters. For the most part this isn't so bad, but ocassionaly we have to use programs that were created here that are anything but easy to use. My main problem right now is getting a super- and sub-script numerals (ie ClO₅). It's really easy with html, but the genius who created this stupid program we have to deal with didn't bother to even consider that such a possiblity might exist some day. Anyway I guess I may just have to code up a different way to do the same thing this program was built for. So much for relaxing before school.

On a more piggish note, I've finished most of the template updates, as should be obvious. I'm still working on some inner pages like the comments etc, and I also need to add a navigation bar for my static pages, but overall I think it looks good.

Starting Blogger

Well, I've been trying to come up with a nice way to display my entries and all, but it was rather daunting to do it myself. So, I looked into blogger and realized it was fairly customizable for my needs, so I'm going to update everything into this format and then update the template and everything as I go. I will have my pink pigs soon!!!

Hello Ryuki

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Not three days after I last updated the site we had an OB exam scheduled. Mako wasn't feeling anything in particular, so we thought we still had plenty of time before Ryuki came. But no! She was already dilated 6 cm when we went in. The midwife and Dr, who coincidentally is my dad, decided that we should go to the hospital as soon as possible. We were rather surprised, but made a mad dash home to pick up the essentials then went to the hospital.
We checked in around 4:00pm, Mako started pushing about midnight, and Adam Ryuki Parker was born on Aug. 6 at 1:36am. He weighed 6 lbs 13 oz. and was 17.75 inches with a lot of hair.

Things seemed to go smooth after that, but then Ryuki started choking on something or stopped breathing or something, anyway they whisked him off to the nursery telling us it would probably just be 10-20 min. 20 min became an hour and then 2, and we started to get worried. We went looking for him in the nursery where we were told that he had been upgraded to the level 2 nursery. When we finally got to where he was, he was hooked up to various systems and such to monitor his heart rate, oxygen level etc. It was a tense time to say the least, but everything was fine, and he was able to be with us the following morning. And go home with us that night.

I realize this is getting long, so I'll just mention that the following week we had to go back to the hospital because Ryuki had a billirueben level of 25. ( I was told that 18 is high enough for hospitalization ) They had to hook him up to an IV and then put him under these lights for about 24 hours. He slept through most of it, and seemed to take it rather well, but Mako had a really hard time and wasn't able to sleep much.

Anyway, one week later we are generally recuperated and I am back at work. Our sleeping schedules and what not are way out of whack, but that's to be expected. As an ending note, here are some picture of Ryuki with his hair nicely spiked. This was before he went into the hospital, so you may notice he looks a little yellow.

Nothing and Nowhere

Well, here we are again, I still have nothing to put on this site, and not really sure when I will. I'm thinking about some nice pink pigs to accent everything, but I'm not sure how that would fly. I also want to put up some kind of navigation, because there will eventually be a ton of content on here ranging in topic on anything from cooking to programming. Also, there will probably be a nice big splash page when my son Ryuki is born. But that will all happen when I have time. Too many things to learn now. I would really like to try something with PHP and MySQL like a forum. I am playing with, maybe even throwing in some XML and XSL into the mix, but like I said, too many things to learn. We'll see how things go.

First Post

アダムとまこ

Hi, my name is Adam Parker, this is my site. Not much to see, but I'm working on that. That's me and my wife Mako in the picture above, and the text in Japanese merely reads "Adam and Mako". I'm currently a Computer Engineering major at BYU and work as a web developer for BYU's Independent Study. I suppose that doesn't give me much excuse to have a site with nothing on it, but give me a couple of months and I'll see what I can do.