stuart test blog

It’s been almost a year since my last post. I had just found out that Mum had a tumour on her brain and that it was terminal. At the time I was preparing for a short trip to see Mum, and was making plans to move back to the UK for a year to be with her. Shortly after that post, I flew over to London with Elliot who would have been just less than 18 months old at the time. Travelling alone with a baby is difficult at any time, and under the circumstances it was even more stressful.

The first week of the visit was spent with Mum at home, helping her with her medication and trying to enjoy as much of the time together as possible. Mum was feeling the effects of the tumour and would often struggle to get her words out, especially when she hadn’t yet taken her medication – medication that made her face and legs swell up from the water retention. At one point, Mum was talking on the phone to my cousin Janine and was trying to say a date, but kept getting the numbers mixed up, and eventually burst into tears. That was a sad moment for me.

The second week that I was there, Mum went into hospital for another operation to try ease the pressure on her brain. The surgeons wanted to get her into a better shape before starting further treatment (chemotherapy and radiotherapy were two options.) We didn’t know it at the time, but Mum never would make it home again. The operation went as well as could have been expected, but the tumour was just too aggressive. We were later advised that further treatment of the tumour would make minimal difference to Mum’s prognosis, and would just decrease her quality of life too much to be worth it.

Leaving Mum in the hospital and having to fly back to NZ with Elliot was another really sad moment for me. At that point we were still hopeful that Mum would be able to have the treatment, and I tried to be positive, but it was hard. Mum spent the next few weeks in hospital and was then moved to a hospice. Meanwhile I planned another trip back to London, this time with Deb and Elliot, and with no return dates planned. The idea being that we would stay over there with Mum until the end.

But this plan didn’t pan out as Mum’s conditioned worsened. One early morning phone call to the hospice, I was told by the nurse that I should come over as soon as I could because Mum was in a lot of pain and deteriorating quickly. We made arrangements that morning, and then just 8 hours later we were on our way to the airport to start the long-haul flight. On arrival in London, we met my brother and Deb’s sister, checked into our hotel, and then went straight to the hospice.

Mum had been in a lot of pain that day and had been given a large dose of pain medication. She was unable to talk to us and could barely grip onto my hand as I sat by her bed. Seeing Mum in this state was tough, especially since it had been less than a year ago that she had been hiking up the glaciers in the South Island and relaxing with us in a sunny Wellington.

That night, Mum passed away. We had returned to our hotel after spending a couple of hours with Mum at the hospice – we had decided that us being there was probably preventing her from getting some needed rest, so we had left with the hope of her making it through the night. But just as we were climbing into bed we got the call to come back to the hospice as Mum’s breathing was getting worse and it was looking like she wasn’t going to make it any longer.

In the end, Ben, Andrew and I were at Mum’s side when she took her last breath. We like to think that she held out long enough for us all to be there, to say good bye. It was a terribly sad moment, but I’m glad we were there.

Mum’s funeral was two weeks later, and was the first funeral I had ever attended. I’ve heard that funerals are about celebrating someone’s life and reliving the happy moments, and although we tried to think back and reflect on all the good times, it was impossible to avoid the sadness.

More than six months has passed now and I still think about Mum every single day. I get sad when I watch Elliot growing up and see all the funny things she does – I think about how much Mum would have loved to watch her grow up too.

Mum, you’ll be missed forever.

The last few weeks have certainly been hectic. The main project I’ve been working on has got to the crucial phase and as a result I’ve been working 50 – 70 hour weeks. Then some bad news from the UK added to the stress; Mum had a mild stroke and needed surgery to clear a blocked artery in her neck.

What followed was a rollercoaster of emotion as it looked like Mum would come through OK, only to find out they had also found a tumour on her brain which would require further surgery. The roller coaster continued as we first heard that she would make a full recovery, only to find out after the surgery that the tumour was an aggressive form of cancer, which is considered terminal.

We don’t yet have a prognosis from the doctors so it’s difficult to make plans, but at this stage I’ll be heading over soon for a short visit, and then will probably move over to England early next year to spend more time with Mum.

On the business front, Amanzi will continue as normal with my business partner, Simon, driving the Amanzi Online side of things, although I will be looking for someone to help with the onsite, technical support. As for the blog, this will be the last post in a while, and it will stay in (temporary) retirement indefinitely.

The last few weeks has definitely changed my perspective on my life, but I count myself as lucky knowing that Mum is feeling well at the moment, and that I get the chance to spend some quality time with Mum, as well as Mum getting a chance to spend some quality time with Elliot.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years break.

So we’re already  a few days into the new year and I’m just finalising my new years resolutions. I’m doing them a bit differently this year in that I’ll be documenting them and setting target dates with achievable milestones and measurables. In other words, I’ll be able to track and report on my progress through the year. I’ll be posting those soon…

I’ve got a good feeling about 2008. Last year was a bit of a transition year for me career-wise. I took the plunge and quit my permanent job with the aim of going contracting, while building my own consultancy business on the sidelines. I achieved that goal and now have several customers that depend on me for their I.T. needs, all while I have juggled three, different, full-time contracts. So in 2008, I plan to grow the consultancy side of the business to the point where I don’t need to rely on full-time contract roles to supplement my income. (I’ll also be buying a house, raising a daughter, and losing weight/getting fit…)

But I’ll be blogging more on that shortly, and getting back to the title of this post – I’ve brought back my old hairstyle to see in the new year. No more needing to use product, or worrying about hat-hair, or needing to find a good barber/hairdresser. Just a touch-up shave every few weeks and I’m good to go.

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It’s been a really good Christmas break so far with just New Years Eve celebrations to go. Christmas started with the traditional braai on Christmas Eve with friends and family joining us for a feast of steak and boerewors.

We then spent Christmas morning at home and of course it was Elliot’s first Christmas so she got to open presents first.

Meanwhile Dad was cooking up a storm in the kitchen – unfortunately the weather was a bit crappy so couldn’t get out the Skottel, so we had to skip that tradition.

Elliot didn’t mind though, she was loving her new presents: a wooden xylophone and a trolley filled with wooden blocks with the letters of the alphabet and numbers on them.

First week into Movember 2007 and I’ve decided to aim for a classic highway cop moustache – here’s the first of many embarrassing photos for your viewing pleasure! Don’t forget – you can sponsor this effort by donating to the prostrate cancer research fund using my registration number – 107742 – at this address:

http://www.movember.com/nz/donate/?action=sponsorlink&rego=107742

More info…

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I’ll be growin a Mo. That’s right I’m bringing the Mo back because I’m passionate about men’s health and the fight against prostate cancer. Why…

• Every year in New Zealand 2,656 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 600 die of the disease, making prostate cancer the second largest cause of male deaths, after lung cancer.
• The average life expectancy of a man in New Zealand is 4 years less than a woman.

To sponsor my Mo please go to http://www.movember.com/nz/donate, enter my registration number which is 107742 and your credit card details. Or you can sponsor me by cheque made payable to the "Prostate Cancer Foundation of New Zealand" clearly marking the donation as being for my Registration Number: 107742. Please mail cheques to: Movember, PO Box 87 150, Meadowbank 1742, Auckland. All donations over $5 are tax deductible.

All donations are made directly to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of New Zealand who will use the funds to create awareness, increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer, fund research and scholarship programs.

For those that have supported Movember in previous years you can be very proud of the impact it has had and can check out the detail at: Fundraising Outcomes.

Movember culminates at the end of the month at the Gala Partés. These glamorous and groomed events will see Tom Selleck and Borat look-a-likes battle it out for their chance to take home the prestigious Man of Movember title. If you would like to be part of this great night you’ll need to purchase a Gala Parté ticket.

Thanks for your support

Stuart

I’ve been too busy recently to pay much attention to this blog, and with the impending holiday coming up (see first point) I won’t be doing much blogging this month either. So a bullet point list of stuff…

• The Maxwell family is going on holiday! We’re taking Elliot on her first big trip to see family and friends in London and Amsterdam. Really looking forward to this.
• On the topic of our trip, www.tripit.com is probably the best new site I’ve found recently. It’s one of many online trip planners available, but what makes it different is that you don’t have to manually enter in your itinerary – you just email them your itinerary that the travel agent gives you, and they instantly convert it into a trip planner and email you back your login details! Great idea.
• Cafenet need to get a better password reset form on their website. I needed to get urgent access to my emails but I had forgotten my Cafenet password. You can reset it from the Cafenet site but they just email it to you – obviously no good to me as I need to log in to Cafenet to read my emails. Couldn’t they just text it to me, or ask me a couple of security questions to reset it??
• Microsoft are releasing the source code to their .Net framework libraries. But pay close attention to the wording though – they are not open-sourcing their code as that would imply that you can modify the code or contribute to it. You won’t find any of the Microsoft guys saying that the code is open source, more along the lines of "opening up the source…" or "releasing the source code…" The code is released under the Microsoft Reference License which is effectively a read-only license – no modifying or redistributing. If you’re a Dot Net developer looking for better debugging ability, this is for you. If you’re an open source developer wanting to look at the code for help with your project, beware – you should read this eWeek article first.
• I’ve gone back to Vista, after vowing to avoid it until at least service pack 1. There is just one feature which I’ve decided I can’t live without and that is the hybrid sleep function. For a mobile user, this is essential – it allows you to start up and shut down within seconds by putting the computer into a sort-of "deep sleep". It’s somewhere between the normal sleep and hibernation. All the fans turn off and the computer goes into a ultra low power state so that your battery doesn’t drain. If you’re thinking that the hibernation feature in Windows XP is just as good, then you haven’t tried hibernating with more than 2GB RAM – it’s almost as quick to cold boot than to un-hibernate a computer with a lot of RAM.
• I’m going to miss the Technet Unplugged event in October due to aforementioned holiday. That’s a pity because it looks like a good one.
• The whole "Office 2.0" space is really hotting up at the moment with new announcements every day. Zoho has an online database application to go with the rest of their office suite. Google now was a presentation app for their Google Apps suite, but it’s far too basic to be useful at the moment. SlideRocket shows how to do online presentations much better – but you wouldn’t want your internet connection to go down during a presentation, so not sure how sensible it is (and we all know how flaky internet connections are at conferences.) Now Adobe has a cool looking word processor built on Flash/Flex/Air/Whatever – basically it runs in a browser but the technology they are using means you can take it offline too. (maybe SlideRocket need to look at that too.)
• Is it just me or is Apple starting down a slippery slope towards becoming as ‘hated’ as Microsoft? I didn’t mind the fact that they dropped the price of the iPhone so soon – especially since they offered a $100 gift voucher/peace token to disgruntled customers. But it does bother me that they have turned people’s iPhones into bricks. These are the same early adopters that flock to the MacWorld conferences and evangelise their products for them, for free. And you can’t even say that the iPhone bricks were an unfortunate side-effect of the update – Steve Jobs himself said that Apple was prepared to play a cat and mouse game with hackers who try to make their iPhones more functional. This is all about money and greed and it wouldn’t surprise me if more and more Apple fans start turning against their beloved company.
• On a related note, I’m looking to buy a Nokia N95. This has all the functionality that’s missing from the iPhone, just not the big screen or cool interface. I want the high quality camera, GPS and maps, Exchange sync (Nokia app takes care of this), Java apps, HSDPA modem, and no lock in to any particular carrier. The current model has come down in price recently, but that’s probably due to the 8GB model coming out that also has a larger screen (2.8" as opposed to 2.6") Do I wait for the new, expensive model, or pick up a bargain and settle for less. (I think I’ll wait…)
• I’m planning to read three books while away on holiday that I’ve had for a while now – Getting Things Done by David Allen, The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris, and The Dip by Seth Godin – probably in that order too.
• I’ve spent the last few evenings getting my accounts in order, and I’m always amazed at just how good Xero is to work with. The improvements they made to reconciling accounts are just incredible, I reckon Xero saves me around 1 to 2 minutes per bank transaction and if you add it all up, Xero becomes far better value for money than any desktop finance application that I’ve tried. It’s important for me to justify it like that  as I still sometimes wonder if I’m paying too much for the service.
• I fell off my bike the other day trying to go too quickly down a flight of stairs near Frank Kitts Park. The huge graze on my leg wasn’t as bad as my damaged pride when the old lady I had just zoomed past came up to me to find out if I was OK…

OK – that’s enough for now…

Elliot made me a lovely picture for Fathers Day, but I suspect that she had some help from Mummy too.

A cool story about how blogging and Google brought a present to our daughter, Elliot…

Over the last few days, we have received lots of presents from friends and family for the arrival of Elliot, who sends her thanks by the way. But one present from Karen and Jason had the wrong address on it, didn’t have a return address, and was sent just to Elliot Maxwell.

So what would you do if you received a package addressed to someone else with no return address? Well, our neighbour down the road (who doesn’t know us) opened the card and present to find more clues about who the gift belonged to. The card inside didn’t mention any other names apart from Elliot Maxwell, but it was obvious that the present for a newborn baby.

Google to the rescue, and despite the fact that Elliot was not even 10 days old at the time, the first record for a search for Elliot Maxwell was indeed our daughter as featured on our DebandStu blog! And as we keep our contact email addresses on the site, we received an email that day to find out that the parcel was delivered to the house just down the road from us.

So thanks, Russell, for your ingenuity!

Regular readers of this blog would have noticed the lack of posting over the last couple of weeks, in fact it took Paul Potts’s amazing opera singing to get me to fire up Live Writer again.

The blogging break was, of course, brought on by the birth of our first daughter, Elliot Ruby Maxwell. We’ve started a Picasa Web Album for her here: http://picasaweb.google.com/studebelliot

So now that things are settling down again, I’ve got a bit of catching up to do.

I’m back blogging again after a hectic month in the Maxwell family…

First I resigned from my position at Datacom with the intention of getting into the contracting market. In typical fashion, nothing came up until the last week when I suddenly had two contracts to choose between. So I’m now contracting through a consultancy firm called Resultex and am posted at BNZ on a large-scale desktop rollout project.

Secondly, we had to move out of our rental house in Brooklyn as the landlords were returning from their stay overseas. We wanted to stay in Brooklyn, but nothing came up that we either liked or could afford. So we ended up moving out to Ngaio to a nice house a couple of doors down from Simon and Kate (Deb’s cousin.)

Thirdly [sic], we realised that it was about time we did some shopping for Baby Maxwell, who is now less than 2 months away from showing his/her face. So we set up the nursery with the cot and change table, bought a nifty Mountain Buggy (Urban Elite), and started working our way through ‘The List’ at Baby Star.

Things are a lot more settled down now, so I’ll be focusing a lot more on posting quality content to this site, and especially infrastructure related posts. I’ve narrowed down the list of categories to just four and will be making better use of tags to classify the posts. And for those that are not reading this post through a feed reader, you’ll notice the new site theme which is based on Freshy 1.0.