PlayBook Work Log: December 16 2012December 16, 2012
Well it has been a long time since I've done any PlayBook development. Life just hasn't afforded it recently, and any time I've had has gone to BB10 stuff.
But I wanted to make a quick little enhancement to my Alarm Clock app so that it would support a visual alarm for Eli, our 3 year old.
We're going to try having him use the PB as his alarm clock, and have the background image change when it's time for him to get up.
It took 20 minutes to make the code changes, but it looks like I don't actually have the PB SDK set up on my new computer. I downloaded 2.1 and tried to install, but during installation the installer freezes, with the window showing nothing but black. Groan. Why must computers be such a bear? After 20 minutes I finally got the installer to work by choosing the installation directory on my C:\ driver rather than my E:\ drive.
Initial implementation: 20 min
SDK installer troubleshooting: 20 min
Testing and bug fixes: 35 min
- Bug 1: Part of my implementation logic didn't make sense.
- Bug 2: Alarm type was getting reset once app was exited and started again due to a subtle bit of logic that took 20 minutes to discover.
Total: 75 min
Struggles reconciling the disparity between rich and poor, and how we should liveOctober 17, 2012
The last couple of years have been an interesting journey. To a fault, I have been pondering money issues. Where this started, I think, was the realization of how financially blessed Meredith and I are. We have both been successful in our careers, and with that has come good salaries. Since I grew up in a family where one parent worked outside of the home, and I always felt like we were very well off, I at some point started to question whether Meredith and I really needed all that we were being given.
Something that has exacerbated this questioning is that in the last year, my app development hobby exploded, and at one point I was making twice as much money on app sales as I was at my day job. Around the time this happened, I felt like God was clearly telling me that this app money was our "cup overflowing", and that we should use that money beyond ourselves. It has been a very joyful process for both Meredith and I.
More recently, I read the book
Radical: Taking Your Faith Back From The American Dream by David Platt. I would highly recommend this book to my Christian friends and family. The chapter that really hit home for me was chapter 6. If I can paraphrase, there are many thousands of children that die each day due to starvation or preventable diseases. Many of us are vaguely aware of that, but file it away in the back of our minds. Meanwhile, we consume ourselves with our desire for more physical stuff, prettier stuff, or experiences. Jesus tells us pretty plainly in the New Testament to do otherwise, but we fall victim to interpreting many of the difficult teachings of Jesus through a materialistic North American context. Our culture is far more powerful than we give it credit. David Platt argues that our blindness to this issue is analogous to the blindness that people had to slavery. It's very frightening to realize that such good, God-loving people honestly believed that slavery was good. Is it perhaps similarly frightening that many North American Christians are blind to the control that their culture has over their lifestyle and how they interpret the teachings of Jesus?
Having read this, I feel very convicted that I am far more materialistic than God desires us to be. And secondly, I feel like David Platt's writing has been successful in dislodging my mental defense mechanism which allows me to ignore the critically poor in the world. Part of this is that I'm a parent now, and the thought of watching one's child, Eli or Hazel, die to starvation or a preventable disease, is something that I can empathize with far more than I could before having kids. The way we perceive harm to our children is profoundly powerful. When one can empathize with other parents in third world countries, it is like receiving a large electric jolt. No longer is it a vague abstract concept for me. It is real people, just like me, living a nightmare.
This may sound extreme, but I have cried very heavy and burdened tears at least twice in the last week.
One of the core questions I am struggling with is how much money it takes to save a life. Two billion people in the world live on $2 a day. So the $5000 that we can easily spend on a two week vacation is an incredible sum of money in comparison.
If there are thousands of children each day on the tipping point between life and death, how is it possible that it is God's will for me to use that money for my own pleasure instead of helping my brothers and sisters?Being hit with that question has been tough. It really shakes one's whole world view of money, and how we should live. And it seems kind of silly, because it's not like I've been completely oblivious to this topic my whole life.
I'm thirsty to talk with others, both people who have likewise been convicted by these questions, and those that think such extreme thoughts are misguided and unhealthy. Obviously there must be a balance somewhere, but most suggestions of balance I have heard so far don't seem to answer the $5000 question I pose above.
If you have any thoughts or comments, let me know:
mailto:daniel.bigham@gmail.comWhat a dayOctober 16, 2012
I'm currently in Champaign Illinois for my yearly trip to the headquarters of Wolfram Research. Today at 2:30 as I was typing away on my laptop, I started to feel a pain in my chest -- the bottom three inches or so of my sternum. It was mild pain, but one's mind always wonders whether one should be concerned about such things. I told my manager so that if I went into any distress, someone would know what I was feeling, but continued to work. After 20 minutes or so, it started to get worse, and I felt the urge to lay down, so I packed up my things and headed back to my hotel room to get some rest.
I feel asleep and woke up a couple of hours later with significantly more pain, and I could feel my heard beating. I took my pulse and it was 110 bpm, which isn't at all normal for waking up from a nap. I started doing some Google searches and was going to phone telehealth but I was overcome with the sense that being alone in a hotel room with significant chest pain and an elevated heart rate wasn't very smart. I went to put my shoes on, and as I sat up I felt even worse, so I didn't even bother putting my socks on.
As I walked down the hall, I felt more ill, and I could feel my heart pounding faster and faster. I didn't feel overcome with panic, so my racing heart was really concerning me. I got to the front desk and wanted to first tell them my symptoms, and second figure out a way for me to get to the hospital to get checked out. My pain was evident in my voice, and when they heard "chest pain" they didn't seem at all interested in me going by taxi. The lady at the front desk later explained that she has had several family members in their 30s and 40s die from cardiac arrest, so she wasn't going to mess around. I felt badly about calling an ambulance and wanted to avoid that, but they wouldn't have any of it. My grandma Bigham died of a heart attack because she didn't want to raise a fuss with her symptoms, so I suppose we should learn our lesson. I got them to phone Meredith and let her know my symptoms.
I was really feeling overcome by my pain and racing heart, which was now > 130 bpm, so I lay down and elevated my feet. (is that what you're supposed to do?) The ambulance arrived after about 5 minutes and I stood up and got on the stretcher. They loaded me into the ambulance and measured my heart rate and blood pressure, which I think were 130 bpm and 160/100. They started monitoring my heart, and there were no signs of trouble. He explained that, while the details are complex, they are trained to quite easily pick out the signs of heart trouble, and they weren't seeing anything of serious concern.
I got to the hospital and they did an ECG. Everything looked ok. The last major thing they wanted to rule out was a blood clot. Because I have had surgery recently and spent 6 days in bed, the risk of that was a bit higher. So they took some blood. It ended up being an hour or so before I had the chance to call Meredith and let her know that there were no signs of trouble. I lay there feeling very badly that all this time she must have been frantic not knowing what was going on. As I was requesting that they bring a phone for me to talk to her, she actually phoned the hospital. I was able to let her know that everything looked fine, so I could finally relax knowing that she wasn't in the dark.
After two hours of waiting, the doctor was able to present the results of the test, which showed no markers of blood clot. I was A-OK. They did a quick ultrasound to make sure there were no visible signs of distress in my heart or lungs, and that looked great. And finally, they gave me a numbing agent to drink to see if that had any affect on my GI tract. By the time they gave me the numbing drink, the pain was reduced by 70%, and the drink perhaps helped a bit more, but didn't make it go away.
So here I am back at the hotel room and I've chatted with Meredith and Hannah and my Dad. What a day. I feel somewhat badly that an ambulance ended up being called, but as I said about learning from my grandmother's experience, it's better to fare on the side of caution.
So what is causing the pain? It could be stomach, or it could be musculo-skeletal. Ulcer? Acid reflux? I've had heart burn at least a dozen times in my life and the pain I felt today didn't feel similar at all to heart burn, so it's a bit of a mystery. My guess is stomach. Maybe an ulcer? I've had an emotional week pondering difficult questions of injustice in the world, so maybe that is part of the story.
But glad that everything seems to be ok.
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