Easy as ABC

If you were expecting this to be about abstract base classes, then you are bound to be disappointed. Unless perhaps you have an infant at home.

We have discovered that we can often calm Zach when he’s in a cranky mood by singing the alphabet song. It almost always stops him in his tracks and gets his attention and sometimes gets a big smile. Sometimes we can do this when he’s being cranky and refusing food or the bottle and he will instantly change his tune and start eating or drinking.

I find this quite amazing.

It’s likely that it works with any song (not just the alphabet song) and we have had some success with a couple of other tunes, but I think the alphabet song works best.

If you have a cranky kid, give it a try.

Blogging, redux

As many of you have undoubtedly noticed, I haven’t posted in 6 months. And my last post was about the impending birth of our first child.

Well, Zach was born a healthy baby boy at 8 pounds and 14 ounces and the last few months have certainly been an adventure. You can see pictures of a small part of that adventure at http://gallery.zachabramowitz.com/.

Zach

It’s obviously a big change and of course, he is the center of much of our attention now. When I get home from a day of pressing keys, it’s nice to spend time with my son, rather than banging on more keys. I have actually, in the past few months, spewed random thoughts into the digital ether, but it has been in the one-liner style of tweets and Facebook status updates. Compared to blogging, these are quick, which is great when you don’t want to spend a bigger chunk of time, but they are of course more shallow and tend to have a different audience. And some things like technical info of real substance, don’t lend themselves at all to those mediums.

Lately, I’ve felt a vague feeling that I’d like to blog. It could be because of the need for expression, the need for catharsis, the need to feel part of a community, yada, yada… Or it could simply be that I miss having a place where I can jot down random little bits of technical info that I don’t want to forget and have other people benefit and/or comment with their own refinements. Or maybe it’s vanity. Or maybe it’s a little bit of all these things.

In any case, here we go…