Catching Up: Part II

Joey is BUSY

Joseph has some very industrious, detail-oriented tendencies which he credits to his German heritage. He is, at times, a workaholic. Sometimes it's because Alyrica demands it of him (owning a business is not what everyone dreams it is), but other times it's just because he wants to get things done. Lately he's been working on his latest baby company, Active911.

Active911 is actually a really cool idea. Joseph has been a volunteer firefighter/EMT with the Philomath Fire Department for the last ten years. Everyone carries around these clunky pagers (yes, apparently they still exist) with piercing alarms to let them know when a 911 call has come in. However, now everyone carries around cell phones and increasingly, smartphones. (If they're like Joey, they also tend to lose their pagers/chargers.) Joseph thought it would be a good idea to send 911 alerts from the dispatch center to emergency responders' phones. So for the past seven months or so he's been designing a system that will send alerts to any type of cell phone (iPhones, Android phones, "dumb" phones, etc.) and allow users to interact with other users in their department, letting them know whether they can respond or not. Smartphones obviously have more features: alert messages come with a map that allows users to see the location of the emergency as well as who in their department is responding (or can't respond).

Active911 very quickly took off, thanks in part to partnering to help a system called CADPage, which delivers alert messages to Android phones. Active911 is designed for any type of emergency responder, whether in a police or fire department, but is mostly used by fire departments. They have users all across the country and are adding new departments every day. However, the thing that everyone has been asking about is an actual iPhone/iPad App. For the past two or three months, Joseph has been working night and day to program an Active911 app. I literally mean night and day. He does as much work as he can on it during the day, while being interrupted with pressing Alyrica matters, and then usually programs until sometime between 2 AM-6 AM because "there are no distractions then." I've been trying to get him to sleep more, but he has been really excited about his work. He has started a few businesses over the past ten years, but this one has really gained momentum and is providing a very useful service. I think what makes it really rewarding is that it's something he's interested in and there is a base of very enthusiastic, very supportive users.

At something like 3 AM on May 8th, he finally submitted the Active911 App to the Apple App store. The word is that it currently takes about seven days for Apple to review an app and reject or approve it, so we expect to hear about it early next week. Joseph is really nervous it will be rejected. That would be a shame since it's so useful and the service has so many happy users already, but I think things will be fine either way. If it's rejected, he can tweak some things to make it more acceptable to Apple, and if it's not, there will be a bunch of happy people and he will be relieved and able to work on other things (and I won't have to fight for his attention over his laptop screen). 

Nova

Nova's preferred sleeping position.

When we came back from Mexico, we noticed something had changed about our dog. She was thinner and less fluffy. I think she went through a growth spurt and we suddenly came back to an adolescent dog! She certainly acts more like a teenager. Less puppy-like romping- she has serious energy and needs to really get it out and rough-house with someone. She has also suddenly developed attitude problems. We never had a problem leaving her at home and coming home to a very grateful dog. But in the past two or three weeks, if she feels as if she's been left at home unfairly, we'll come back to a trashed house. Now, she has lots of dog toys. She gets them out of her box and plays with them all day. I don't mind if she rips those up or chews on them or scatters them around. But for every naughty incident she has left her toys UNTOUCHED and completely shredded: the ringbearer's pillow from our wedding, a CD, the instruction manual for our dishwasher, books, pens, a stuffed sheep given to me by my great-grandmother, and she's ripped the eyes and noses off of a couple of Diana's stuffed animals. I'd say she needs something to occupy herself with, but SHE HAS HER TOYS. That sort of thing is on my "Bratty Teenage Behavior" list. Unfortunately, one of the best remedies is more exercise and keeping her occupied, and Joseph is the only one who can do that right now (and he has been busy). I am really looking forward to the time when I can take her for walks at a pace faster than a slow waddle and throw toys and play with her without pulling muscles. She is still a very sweet dog who loves us and wants to get along with everyone, we just have to work on a few problem behaviors before she'll be a really well-behaved girl. 

More Baby

I think I've written enough about how mentally done I am with pregnancy. There's not terribly much to update about the baby until he actually shows himself. He's measuring slightly behind schedule, which gives me this horrible feeling that he'll actually be in there the full 40 weeks if not longer (*weep*), but he's still active with a healthy heartbeat, which is the best thing I could hope for aside from actually being able to see and hold him and have my abdomen back.

The most common question people have is whether we have a name picked out. We really don't care about keeping names a secret since everyone's going to find out anyway. The truth is that we just haven't settled on anything. In the running are:

• William
• Joseph
• Matthew
• Patrick
• Finn
• Lloyd
• Timothy
• Arthur

all in various combinations. Some I'd only use as middle names, some Joseph prefers more than I do, some have awful nicknames... maybe it's a good thing pregnancy lasts ten months since we seem to need all that time to pick out a name. I can think of about a dozen girls names right off the bat that I'd love to use, but for some reason it's really hard to come up with a boy's name. Some of the names Joseph likes seem too grown-up and I can't imagine using them on a little boy, but Joseph points out that "he'll only be a kid for a short while and he'll be a man practically forever." I guess he has a point. Hopefully we'll have something picked out by the time the baby's actually born.