Rubinary

Wild Beast

Daniel — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 06:07:47 +0000

Here is a scene taped by Lenchik titled “Lenchik Meets Shublik”. The video has 2 awesome scenes — first is Shublik’s mean double paw attack and soon after that some crazy howl that we have never heard him make before.

Lenchik ended up getting some war wounds on his legs, but I think he became very fond of Shublik. He also advices we check Shublik for rabies that Shublik has possibly contracted from Lenchik.

Head Control

Daniel — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:11:53 +0000

As evident on these photos it takes a lot effort and concentration to lift and hold one’s head. Turns out that some babies by the time they get closer to one month of age can do it for short amounts of time while lying on their tummy. Arosha has started doing it at 3 weeks, but it still is very hard for him.

Otherwise things are going as they were, nothing really new. We have stopped worrying so much about Arosha, but this week Shublik has gotten very sick and we were not quite sure if he’s going to make it. Today he seems to be a bit better and we hope it’s a good sign.

Either way — families are hard business! But what’s life without them?

Turning 30 Today

Alena — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:14:12 +0000

My husband is turning 30 today. Happy Birthday, my love! Be happy and healthy, enjoy life and live long!

Thoughts on iPad

Daniel — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:41:56 +0000

In a surprising for pretty much everyone, including myself, turn of events I’ve arrived to a decision that I want an iPad.

My 30th birthday is coming up in less than a week and I kept getting questions about what I would like to get for it. And over the past weekend it kind of dawned on me. I wouldn’t buy one myself as I don’t really have a need for it, but getting it as a present changes everything. I asked my parents and my sister what my budget range is and it turns out that it’s exactly what I would need to get an iPad.

This is where the easy part ends and the “agony” begins. I have a lot of questions that I’m trying to answer and I have a lot of things to weight. The biggest question is this — do I get one now and get instant gratification or do I try really hard to be patient and wait for a 2nd generation? Below are my thoughts on the topic.

Hardware

There are clearly things that are bound to be updated on the next generation iPad which would make a lot of sense to me. It might be a great device as it is but I think it would make a lot of difference with the following changes:

Front Facing Camera
Now with addition of FaceTime to iPhone 4 and the promise from Steve Jobs to have millions of devices supporting it, iPad is a great candidate to get one. Sitting on your living room couch and doing a FaceTime call on a nice big screen of iPad? Sign me up.

Screen
This is probably the biggest reason to wait for the next version. Older iPhones have PPI of 163. iPhone 4 has 326 PPI! iPad has 132 PPI. Every time I look at iPhone 3GS’s screen these days I can’t believe how fuzzy it is. You get used to good stuff really quickly. Granted, iPad is going to be held farther from your eyes, so a lower PPI than that of iPhone 4 will look fine, but I think at this point it would bother me in its current form. This would be a very logical thing to upgrade.

RAM
This is probably iPad’s weakest spot. It only has 256MB of RAM. iPhone 4 has 512. The biggest problem with that is Safari. From what I’ve read it often is unable to keep even a single page cached. Meaning that it does a complete reload of all the pages every time. It might be slightly annoying for reading news, but it’s a deal breaker for a page that you’re trying to fill a form in.

The above 3 changes would make it perfect for me. A built in USB port would be nice, but that’s very unlikely to happen. Currently available accessories will do just fine.

Wi-Fi ONLY vs Wi-Fi + 3G

Now this is my biggest problem with an iPad. It’s absolutely possible technically to use iPhone as a modem tethered through Bluetooth. Yet Apple insists that you spring for an extra $130 if you wish your iPad to get on internet via anything, but Wi-Fi.

I would go ahead and blame it on AT&T, but it seems to be more in Apple’s court. One can just take out a 3G card from his iPhone and stick it into iPad and iPad gets a 3G connection. Also if you feel like you don’t want to do that AT&T lets you subscribe to the data plan on monthly basis, no contract. Have a trip coming up? Get a month of 3G.

In addition to that Apple thought that only a device with 3G should have a GPS chip. I guess the logic is that Wi-Fi one never leaves your home. This is my 2nd biggest question. Is it worth spending $130 on 3G and GPS chips or not?

On The Road

One of the big reasons to get an iPad would be to replace my MacBook Pro when traveling. I’m trying to think of all things I do on it while on the road and see if iPad can keep up:

Photography
This is the main reason I lug my laptop around with me on trips — loading the pictures from the camera as backup and checking how well they are coming out on a decently sized screen. I rarely do any photo editing during the trip and do all of the post-processing upon getting home, on my desktop workstation.

Interestingly enough Apple does sell a photo kit that allows one to either load photos from an SD card into iPad or allows you to plug-in a USB cable and a card reader into it for CF (what I need). I just hope that my particular reader will work with it, but otherwise seems like iPad would work just fine for me.

It would be also nice if I could copy the files from iPad back to another card using the same method, for backup purposes during the trip. Having a copy of my photos on the laptop always gives me some peace of mind.

E-Mail and Web
Now this is what iPad is very good for sure. It will cover my e-mail and Internet surfing needs perfectly. I don’t do anything particularly difficult with e-mail (such as moving or working with files) and from what I’ve seen the mail client on iPad is great.

Same thing with Safari. The best or one of the best mobile browsers in existence on a big screen? 100% replacement for a laptop during travel.

Maps
I usually use my iPhone to navigate on our road trips. But every morning I like to look at my map on the laptop, for a bigger picture. It’s hard to gauge the whole drive sometimes on iPhone’s small screen. And here iPad certainly fits the bill. I use Google maps, so I’d be using the same thing on iPad with much easier navigation.

Now wouldn’t it be great to use iPad on the road where there is no Wi-Fi? GPS into the location you’re at and look at your route on that big screen? Yes, I can’t do that on laptop now anyhow, but it really is a shame that Apple wont allow iPhone+iPad synergy without spending an extra $130.

Google Earth
Sometimes I refer to Google Earth for locations of National Park stamp sites. Luckily there is a version of Google Earth available for iPad and iPhone. On iPhone it’s not very useful, but again in iPad it will be great.

Secure Shell
Sometimes I have a need to get on the server via SSH when I’m on the go. Obviously I can easily do that from my laptop, but even an iPhone has SSH clients available. On iPhone it’s barely usable because of the limited screen real estate, but I can do rudimentary tasks such as restart Apache for example. I think SSH on iPad will be more than usable — not for some major coding, but for small fixes that might need to be done on the road.

Photo Processing and Blog Posting
On rare occasions we do some blog posting on the go. Now our blogging rule is that we do no posts without pictures and pictures don’t go on the blog without going through Photoshop first. Even though there are some photo editing tools available on iPad it’s hard to beat Photoshop. On the other hand I never had much luck with getting photo processing done on the laptop either — the screen is just not big enough and I don’t feel comfortable. HDR is another thing that I won’t be able to do without my usual tools.

I think that about covers it for my laptop task. Overall the only place where I’m going to lose some flexibility is going to be photo processing. Everything else seems like a win.

Synchronization

I’ve started thinking about how iPad would play with my iPhone and it seems there are a lot of weak spots here. I think the problem is that it all rests in the 3rd party developers’ hands. I believe this is about the only place where Android has a winning hand over iOS. It handles cloud syncing much better.

Of course there is a good number of 3rd party and built-in apps (mail, calendars) that can handle syncing just fine, but those are in a minority. Here’s a dumb example — I would like to play Angry Birds on a big iPad screen while at home, but if I’m going to work on a subway I can’t take out my iPhone and continue my progress because iPhone has no idea about the state of the game on iPad and so on.

Hopefully more and more developers will implement cloud syncing in their apps, but it would really be great for Apple to provide some official API and host it on their servers just as they do with Push Notifications.

Refresh Cycle

Now the big question is when will the next generation iPad come around? Will it be handled as iPhones and iPods that get a yearly refresh or will it be more like iMacs and MacBooks that don’t have much of a regular schedule?

Currently iPhones get refreshed during the summer, iPods during the fall. iPad was first announced at the end of January and was released in April. Could we expect the same cycle for iPad 2? Only Apple knows.

Summary

I think that about covers all the topics that have been popping up in my head. It’s going to be nice to have iPad at home and it’s going to be even nicer to have it on the road.

I think the logical think to do here is to just gather up all my patience and just wait it out until the 2nd version comes around. I can also see great value in having an option of having a 3G connection on it, but I might be just too greedy to pay $130 to even have an ability to use it. This remains to be seen.

What do you think? Do I wait or do I go for it now? Do I pick Wi-Fi only model or do I get Wi-Fi + 3G one?

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts and feedback on the subject.

Doctor says that our jaundice …

Daniel — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:25:19 +0000

Doctor says that our jaundice is gone and today we are 7lb 15oz. Only 1 ounce short of 8 pounds.

First time out with Arosha

Daniel — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 23:26:26 +0000

First time out with Arosha. Dinner at Halikarnas. (via Gowalla)

First Bath

Alena — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:22:19 +0000

Сегодня Ароша первый раз в жизни принимал ванну. Дело это ему совсем не понравилось, и он громко плакал во время процесса. Похоже, вода была слишком холодной (у нас нет термометра) — ванночка стояла в зале на журнальном столике, и вода остыла очень быстро. Завтра надо будет погорячее сделать.

Вообще мне было страшно купать сыночка, и пока что уверенности еще не появилось. Сегодня купаться нам помогала бабушка (завтра тоже поможет), но вообще надо как-то приспосабливаться и делать это самим.

А в целом у нас до сиих пор идёт сложный период адаптации. Я сильно устаю и всё время нервничаю (в основном без особых причин). Самая главная цель сейчас — это хорошо наладить процесс кормёжки. Я всё время боюсь, что он недоедает, иногда сцеживаю молочко и даю ему бутылочку, но в таком случае я боюсь что он перестанет сосать из груди и что производство молока как-то собьётся. Вобщем, большинство моих мыслей крутится вокруг этой темы, и это не делает меня сейчас самым лёгким человеком для общения.

А еще вчера мы ходили первый раз гулять. Мне как всегда было страшно (что проснётся и будет плакать на улице, а я не буду знать что делать), но всё прошло хорошо — Ароша продрых все 25 минут прогулки.

Father and Son

Daniel — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:09:16 +0000

I configured the camera and did the post-processing, Alena did the shooting and Arosha did the posing. It was a family collaboration project.

I have to say that I’m quite happy with the quality of the end result. As I said before I’m a fan of Andrey’s photography and I hope I’m not going to sound presumptuous when I say that it has an Andreyesque feeling to it.
August 20, 2010.

Generations

Daniel — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:37:27 +0000

A couple of words about five generations of our family with some history and the selection of the name Aaron. Or from Aron to Aaron.

Selecting The Name

We had a name picked out for a girl for a long time now, but we never could pick something for a boy. So when on March 5th we found out that we’re having a boy we got together with my parents for a family meeting and ended up walking away with a decision to name our son Aaron.

Our criteria was very simple — the name should sound good in English, have a Russian form, because that’s what we’re going to use and having Jewish roots would be a nice bonus.

We went through a good number of names and even though we had Aaron in mind before when we were hypothetically thinking of names (way before we even wanted to get pregnant) we never really stopped on it or any other name.

The reasons for that probably were two fold. First of all since the name is rather uncommon in the part of the world where we come from I didn’t really know any other forms of it. My dad though said that a short form would be Ronya or Ronechka and we liked that there were variations beside Aron. But what probably really pushed us over was the fact that my dad’s grandfather and my great grandfather was named Aron.

And a while later we had two other forms of the name. First was Ari from Entourage — Ari Gold. Even though he is technically Ariel (another name that I liked, but it had no Russian form and The Little Mermaid has ruined it for boys), Ari works for Aaron too. And a day after Aaron was born — my dad remembered that his grandmother used to call his grandfather Arosha.

Arosha ended up being our favorite form of the name. We used to call him Ari most of the time during the pregnancy, but now it’s pretty much Arosha or variations of it.

Also I’m fairly sure that if we were still living in the old country there is a little chance that I’d risk naming my son Aaron or Aron. In U.S. it’s fairly common and back there it’s very Jewish — and in that country that would make things harder for him, which is sad, but true.

And a quote from the name dictionary:

The boy’s name Aaron \a(a)-ron\ is pronounced AIR-an, AHR-an. It is of Hebrew origin, and the meaning of Aaron is “mountain of strength”.

Family History

I mentioned above that we had the name in the family. My dad’s grandfather, my great grandfather and Aaron’s great great grandfather was named Aron. In Russian the name is spelled with one A.

The strange thing is that during all of this we never thought that August 8th would be the birthday. The date had no significance in my mind until the day when we already went to the hospital and my dad told me that he wanted Alena to give birth today (the 8th) because the date was significant.

Turns out that grandfather Aron has passed away on August 8th, 1943. And our Aaron being born and named after him on this date would be a symbol of continuation of life. It happened as a complete coincidence, but I’m still quite amazed by how it all came together.

I asked my dad to scan an old photograph from our family archive. It was taken in 1906, the year Aron and Hava Meira (my great grandmother) were married. He’s only 28 on it, but to me looks quite a bit older than I look, to myself at least, in my 29.

Middle Name

Thing were much simpler with the middle name selection. In line with Russian tradition we used my name for Aaron’s middle name — Daniel. In Russia he would be Daniilovich and here it’s just Daniel.

When we came to this country we all wanted our names to become more Americanized so we ended up dropping our middle names.

Some time ago I came to regret that decision. Instead of dropping it I should’ve just changed it to my dad’s name — Borisovich to Boris. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing lately on all my documents.

I think it’s a good tradition and I’m proud to have my dad’s name as my middle name.

Today our umbilical cord fell …

Daniel — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:38:01 +0000

Today our umbilical cord fell off. There is still some healing that needs to happen there, but it’s another milestone.

Today we are back to our birth…

Daniel — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:58:40 +0000

Today we are back to our birth weight of 7lb 8oz.

First Week

Daniel — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:21:15 +0000

We’re though our first week of parenthood and I must tell you that it’s quite a bit more overwhelming than I imagined. I always thought that it’s just very physically tiring. It very much is, but that’s nothing compared to the emotional part.

I’m a worrying type in general, and do I worry or what? Alena seems to be just like me with that respect. First of all we have jaundice — too much bilirubin that causes the yellowing of skin and eyes. About 60% of infants have it, but we were worried that our case is worse than usual. So far we’ve had a number of appointments with our pediatrician and she’s monitoring his condition.

Last blood test showed that it’s going down. I’ve read a lot about it and maybe it’s not as bad as we originally imagined, but it still is worrisome. Hopefully the trend will continue and won’t have to worry about that for much longer.

The best way to treat jaundice is for the baby to eat a lot and therefore poop a lot. In the hospital we were told that Aaron has a tongue-tie. It’s when the membrane under the tongue is too short and as a result he can’t lift his tongue much up. They told us that we didn’t really have to do anything since he seemed to be sucking well.

The thing is though that Alena is breastfeeding, so we have no good way to measure how much he ate. And tongue-tie is a thing that makes it much harder for him to eat. We decided to see a specialist. That was this morning. We saw Dr. Goldsmith at Long Island College Hospital. Usually there is a long wait for an appointment, but they made an exception for us.

He said that he never does anything unless it’s needed and in a lot of cases sends people back home. But in our case he said that it indeed was a bad tongue-tie and Ari couldn’t really move his tongue much at all. The membrane was quite thick and wouldn’t stretch out on its own. Also he said that it’s pulling on his gum and that it probably would cause speech problems. So the sooner we do it, the better.

Luckily the procedure (the cut) itself is easy to perform and could be done right there an then. It took less than a second and Arosha didn’t even start crying. He is able to feed right after that and doesn’t need any antibiotics since saliva is the best one there is. Either way after a lot of worrying we are happy that we’ve done this. Alena says that he’s able to nurse noticeably better already.

Another things is his pooping and peeing. Never thought I’d be so happy to hear every time that my child has pooped. It means that he’s getting enough food, his digestive system is working and he’s getting that extra bilirubin out of him. So far we’ve been doing OK with that with the exception of this night, but Alena informs that the problem has already resolved itself again.

Overall he seems to be doing good with his weight gain. He was born at 7lb 8oz. When we left the hospital on Tuesday he was 7lb and 2oz, which is normal — they always lose some weight right away. They say as long as it’s not over 10% it’s all good. And for us it was a bit more than 4%. On his first doctor appointment he was 7 and 3. And on early Sunday morning he was already 7lb 7oz — almost back to where we started in less than a week. That seems to be the main factor in all of this.

With all this stuff going on my head has been playing tricks on me. I usually am good with remembering little details and recalling such basic things as sequence of events. Not so this week. I’ve become completely absent-minded. I forget everything, can’t remember what I’ve done and what I didn’t do, when, how or why. It’s quite amazing.

Now I hear Arosha crying again and I worry if all is well. I’m sure we’ll get through all of this and looking back it’ll probably look silly, but I wanted to put some of these thoughts and feelings down for future remembrance.

P.S. Posting more pictures of Arosha with no hat on as promised.

Aaron is going to turn one wee…

Daniel — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:02:42 +0000

Aaron is going to turn one week old in 10 minutes. At this time 7 days ago I was barely able to stand. What a week!

My Birthing Experience

Alena — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:41:47 +0000

It’s Thursday evening, and our little boy is sleeping peacefully in the bedroom, giving me an opportunity to reflect on what has been happening to us in the last couple of days.

I have to say that giving birth was probably single most painful experience in my life (physical pain that is), but I don’t regret for a second that I chose not to use any pain meds. I can do it again — and hopefully, there will be a chance in the future.

My contractions have started Saturday night. Actually, I wasn’t even sure if those were real contractions or not, because I did not perceive them as contractions per say, but as a pain in my lower belly which was coming and going. The pain was very manageable in the beginning, and even though I was waking up almost every hour, I got some rest and slept through the better part of the night.

I decided to time the intervals between the contractions in the morning, since if they were more or less regular, that meant that I was experiencing the onset of a real labor, and not a false one. They were about 10 minutes apart on average. I called the hospital and found out that my doctor, Lana Selitsky, was not on call, so if we were to come, Dr. Pastore would help us. I met doctor Pastore during one of my prenatal visits, and I liked her. She told me that judging by my voice I am not in too much of a discomfort, and that I should come to the hospital either if the pain gets much worse, or if the water breaks.

After Danya woke up, we got some breakfast and watched TV. Meanwhile, my contractions started to get stronger and intervals between them got shorter. We still weren’t sure, however, if I was in labor. Well, d. Borya came to the rescue. He checked my belly and confirmed that I was having a real thing. We weren’t sure when to go to the hospital, because I didn’t know how strong the pain should be to indicate the right dilation. D. Borya helped again by checking my cervix later in the day, which was 6 cm dilated and almost effaced at that point.

To the hospital we went, and at around 6:30pm I got admitted. I got transferred to the delivery room soon after admission, at around 9:15pm my water broke (I was 9 cm dilated at that time). I started pushing in another 15 minutes or so, and at 10:10pm our son was born.

Danya and his mom were in the delivery room with me (his dad had to stay outside since they only allowed 2 visitors to be present) during the final stage. T. Oksana held one of my legs and Danya was on the other side watching and giving me his support. It meant a lot to me that I wasn’t there by myself.

The funny thing is that we were in room #8 on 08/08 and there were 7 people in the room… that is before Aroshka made his grand appearance. He was put on my chest right away, and I felt a sense of relief that he got through without complications (doctors had to cut me a little and I got a couple of minor tears, but that’s nothing). I have to say that I was happy to see our little boy at last, but it took some time for me to really bond with him.

I am feeling overwhelming love for him right now and it grows stronger and stronger with each minute we have him. I truly did not understand what it is the mother feels for her child before we got our own baby (I am writing this and I can’t stop crying for some reason — I know that my hormones are messed up right now).

We got a little scare in the beginning — Aaron could not breath too well on his own. A pediatrician came in and she said that he’s got a little bit of fluid in his lungs. She considered taking him out to NICU in case he had an infection (which was highly unlikely since so little time has passed between the water broke and he was born), but luckily after she sucked out the liquid he was able to breath normally and she let him stay with us.

We spent 2 nights at the hospital. I had a little bit of difficulty getting the breastfeeding going, but we are getting better and better at this.

Right now little Arosha has a jaundice, so I am trying really hard to provide enough food for him to get the bilirubin out of his system. I know that it would have been a faster process if he was on formula (and we might still have to give him some depending on his blood test results which we should get from the doctor today), but I am a firm believer in breast feeding and really hope that it will work out for us.

Overall, I am very happy with my birthing experience. It was painful, but as my sister said — giving birth is the easiest step in the long process of growing a human. I hope that Arosha will be growing healthy and happy and I am looking forward to the years of living as a part of a larger family.

We’re Home!

Daniel — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:06:04 +0000

Another small update — we’re back home from the hospital. They kept Alena and Ari there for 2 nights as a routine.

Alena is already up and about and Arosha sleeps most of the time waking up only to let us know that he needs his diaper changed or that he wants to eat. Alena is breastfeeding him already and they are doing well with that.

P.S. I was never under an illusion that I will be able to resist posting tons and tons of baby pictures. I just knew it was going to happen even though I always wondered why people post so many pictures of their babies. I know — very hypocritical of me. But it is what it is. Prepare for major baby picture influx.