Random()

I think of more things that I’d like to post about than I currently have the capacity for! Its finals time and I’m in full crunch mode with the finish line in sight.

I’m actually excited to finish out the Systems Architecture class because the final chapters cover the last thirteen years of my working life. Ninety percent of this is knowledge that I have in my blood at this point. The rest is stuff that I had a high level understanding of, but now have learned greater details. The end result is, I feel very good about this class.

Intro to Telecommunications is an odd, sometimes high level, sometimes low level, parallel to my Systems Architecture class. This makes studying for this class easy and difficult at the same time. At this point, with no assignments due, it has been put on the back burner while I finish out Systems and my other classes. Overall though, I expect to be able to do well – writing a paper and taking the final are all I need to do.

Communications is looking good with the group project faring better than any other group project I’ve dealt with through online classes. After I polish our final paper and submit it tomorrow, all I’ll have is the final. I’ll study for it and take it Wednesday or Thursday – I should do okay.

And then there’s US History, arguably my favorite subject this semester. Before taking the final I have to write a 7-10 page paper on a site visit to a historical place that coincides with the period of history we are covering, from colonization to Lincoln’s assassination. The trip I’d planned was to visit Ford’s Theater because of the connection to my family’s history, but it got postponed weekend after weekend due to rain, or the expectation of rain, making this potentially fun family adventure into a daddy-daughter adventure. Fun for sure, but difficult to take notes, I’m expecting. I’ll work something out – voice memos, Dragon Dictate (an app I have, but have never used…), or good old fashioned pen and Moleskine notebook (also an app I have, but don’t use…)

It should all be wrapped up in the next couple of weeks – at which point, I’ll have more time for posting! Yeah, right.

I love the App store. Well, that’s a bit of a stretch, I actually hate it. It’s miserable to navigate, slow to browse, and shamefully bad helping users find good software. Hey, at least it isn’t the App Marketplace.

Today my favorite iPhone App is the Guitar Pro app. This is the coolest app I have found for guitar so far, as it allows you to download the entire score for a song and learn it instrument, by instrument. The app stores all of your scores and sorts them by artist, alphabetically or favorites that you select. Although playback sounds like its coming from an 8-bit sound card, the ability to break tracks down and learn them – as well as play along – makes this really nice. The only limitations are your ability to find the songs you want to play. Although I found some great songs I’ve wanted to learn, there’s a lot that I couldn’t find – but I do have obscure tastes. Regardless, this is a fantastic app for picking up new songs.

When my daughter was born we discovered that she had a rare metabolic condition called galactosemia. In the simplest terms, it is an inability to process milk that can lead to a host of horrific effects and even death if someone with the condition consumes enough milk or products that contain the milk sugar galactose, but more on that later. The upshot is that galactosemics must live their entire lives avoiding milk and products that contain milk or milk derivatives. But of course, it’s more complicated than that.

Most people immediately jump to the conclusion that galactosemia is equivalent to lactose intolerance, but it isn’t. Lactose is a disaccharide, meaning it is a molecule composed of two sugars – glucose and galactose. Our digestive system breaks the sugar apart and uses the glucose for energy. The galactose is converted into glucose using a series of enzymes that our bodies produce. Galactosemics produce little or none of a key enzyme called GALT. When missing, the breakdown of the galactose sugar halts at a point where it has become GAL-1P, or galactose-1-phosphate. A buildup of GAL-1P to toxic levels can cause a number of different vital organs to fail and if untreated at birth can have a mortality rate as high as 75%. The folks over at the University of Utah put together an excellent primer on galactosemia and genetics.

There are, apparently, other pathways by which our bodies can process small amounts of galactose, but they are not yet fully understood. The best way to be safe as a galactosemic is to maintain a strict diet that avoids milk and milk byproducts.

Milk, cheese, ice cream, and the like are all easy to identify. But the list goes on – milk derivatives like casein and whey must also be avoided along with even less obvious things like hydrolyzed protein, lactostearin, and beans. Beans!

Being the family cook and primary grocery shopper, I have dedicated myself to feeding my family well – with meals that are tasty and safe for everyone to eat. We’ve largely eliminated milk from our meals, although we do keep some around for the occasional guilty pleasure, but for the most part everything I make is safe for galactosemics.

I will be posting my recipe successes here and discuss substitutions and product reviews on foods that are safe for galactosemics. I’ll also be posting links to resources for galactosemics and sharing what I’ve created as well. I hope that the information I provide will be helpful to other parents of galactosemic children as well as galactosemics themselves.

Okay, I know the “Under Construction” sign has been on the front door way too long! I really meant to get back here and upload several posts I’d written, but the demands of daddy day care and school have been all I can handle. However, I’m anxious to get this project moving, so I am opening the doors quietly and will be updating as I can. Hopefully the idea that the site is up and running, rather than “Under Construction,” will force me to get back to it and post some of the stuff I’ve written as well as post about some of the things that have been catching my attention lately.

As a result of this shotgun launch, there are probably several things that may be broken on the site. I’m sorry! I’ll be getting to those things soon too. Be patient, and please come back soon.