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New style for jimdrewes.blog

admin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 04:39:19 +0000

This really isn’t very important, but blog.jimdrewes.com just got a facelift. I found this style on a WP style site, and I thought it looked a bit more professional. So, we’ll see how this one does.

Allergy Season Hits Hard

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:52:55 +0000

I get hay fever (seasonal allergies). Actually, I get really bad hay fever. For as long as I can remember, every year I get perscriptions for half a dozen medications to treat my seasonal allergies, and it’s usually just enough to make life tolerable. My head becomes a block of cement. My nose becomes an open faucet. My eyes get so itchy that I have to lay down with a cool cloth over my face. My airways constrict to the point where I’m usually taking a couple of inhalers every day. There are times that I simply can’t function. But, since this happens every year, I can usually feel the onset of allergy season a few weeks ahead of time. This generally gives me enough time to go to the doctor, get some perscriptions filled, and start building up a barrier to the upcoming allergens. This year was different. We’re only a few days into March, and I’m miserable. Up until Saturday the 7th, I was just fine. I didn’t have so much as a sniffle. I woke up Saturday morning though, and it felt like someone sprayed a can of that expanding foam into my sinuses and my eyes burned like I just got maced. But why? Why did I get no warning this year? I have an answer.

Below is a grid, Monday through Friday of last week. We have day of week, how I felt, temperature, and a few pollen levels:

Day	Feeling	Temp	Elm	Juniper	Maple
2	Good	26F	2	0	0
3	Good	27F	0	0	0
4	Good	43F	2	9	0
5	Good	57F	31	31	9
6	Terrible	72F	277	644	123

So, I think it’s painfully obvious what happened. We had a string of cold days, as would be expected this time of year in St. Louis. Then when we finally get a beautiful spring day… POW! All of the trees start getting frisky, and decide to spread their pollen. According to the St. Louis Department of Health, the pollen levels of Elm, Juniper, and Maple were considered “High” on Friday, but were either absent or low in the days prior. Guess I’ll be watching out for the Elm, Maple, and Juniper trees.

Crouching Diaper, Hidden Jammies

admin — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:55:41 +0000

In our family there is a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve. I remember the tradition starting because I asked for Karate pajamas one year, so my parents let me open them the night before Christmas. Since then, every Christmas eve we all get some form of pajamas.

This year was J.R.’s first Christmas. Amazingly, my sister was able to find these jammies that my parents then gave to J.R. for Christmas Eve. He has Karate pajamas, and he’s only 8 months old.

What you see in this picture is J.R. doing his first ninja moves. If you check out our Christmas Eve pictures, you can see some more shots of J.R. all decked out like a ninja. He even has a little ninja hat thing, which you can see in this picture. He isn’t a big fan of the hat, but I think it looks pretty cool.

J.R. in his Karate Pajamas

Jim Drewes blogging… ehhh, why not?

admin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:52:41 +0000

So, after almost 7 years of running the jimdrewes.com website, I finally decided I might as well put up a blog too. Part of the motivation to do this was the fact that I got tired of people hitting jimdrewes.com classic, and telling me that they “read my blog.” Well, that was never a blog.

The original jimdrewes.com was an early foray into web development (specifically PHP development, and later Ruby on Rails) while I was still in college. It turned into a place where my friends and I exchanged stories, links, and personal news. I often had to moderate the content to make sure I was willing to have my name associated with the general direction things were heading – and I didn’t like having to do that. So, I have a blog now. These are my thoughts alone. I may not have written the software to power the site, but at least I have a more professional outlet to collect my thoughts, ideas, and interests.

The classic jimdrewes.com website will remain. It will likely move to classic.jimdrewes.com, and www.jimdrewes.com will become a landing page. Right now I’m in the process of moving everything over to my new server, so there will be more to say as I progress.

If people read this blog – cool. If not – cool. Hopefully in 7 years I’ll be able to go back to the blog.jimdrewes.com archives and get a chuckle out of what I find valuable today – just as right now I can look back and find amusement in the fact that we thought “Ultimate Foosball” was the greatest idea we had ever developed. (It still is pretty sweet. I just haven’t played in years).