Talk About Horrible Ways to Lose

In the last few years, I've had to deal with terrible losses for my sports teams.

For the Denver Broncos, I was in stadium to witness the horrific loss to the 49ers on the last game of the season -- a BAD 49ers team with Alex Smith as QB -- to oust us from the playoffs in Jay Cutler's first (half) season. Not only was the loss horrid, losing a pretty nice lead and losing in overtime, but Darrent Williams was shot and killed that night, too.

That year, the Mets began a little run of mild success. In 2006, we had our best success, running away with the NL East and sweeping the Dodgers in the first round of the playoffs. This set up a Cardinals-Mets series to go to the World Series. That series nearly killed me. After winning Game 1, the Mets were stunned in Game 2 when, on the way to victory, Shawn Green misplayed a fly ball that led to Cardinal victory. Then, after falling behind and then coming back in the series, Game 7 was in New York. The game was close, and featured one of THE GREATEST CATCHES I'd ever seen:

Endy Chavez make an absolutely unbelievable catch in the 7th inning to rob Scott Rolen of a home run that would have broken the 1-1 tie. I thought victory would come, but Yadier Molina broke my heart with a 9th inning homer. A killer.

This was nothing, though. In each of the next two seasons, the Mets bungles division leads in the last weeks to miss the playoffs. None was worse then 2007, when the Mets managed to blow a 7.5 game lead with 17 games to go. It was amazing. They lost to the Nationals and Marlins those last two weeks. They didn't even manage to force a 1-game playoff.

Then, in 2007, They blew a 3.5 game lead with just over a week to go. That last faux pas allowed the Phillies to win the division and the World Series. Double doh.

BUT, last night was possibly the worst disaster of them all. The New Jersey Devils and Carolina Hurricanes played a Game 7 IN NEW JERSEY. The Devils had a 3-2 lead from about the midway point of the 2nd period on. Martin Brodeur, World's Best Goalie (tm), and the Devils were just 1:20 away now from advancing to the 2nd round of the playoffs.

And then a horrible disaster struck.

Carolina scored to tie the game! With just 1:20 to go! OK, it happens, right? That wasn't the disaster. The disaster is that not 40 seconds later, CAROLINA SCORED AGAIN! Yes, within 40 seconds, the Hurricanes went from ready to pack their bags in a Game 7 loss, to on their way to Washington DC for the 2nd round. An absolute shell shock of a loss -- right their in front of the home fans.

...

I'm not sure what I've done to deserve the hatred of the sports gods, but I'm there.

Screw Jaundis

Sebastian Home on a Beanbag

The family is back home! We arrived to the homestead Sundat at about 4 PM. Home so much faster than with Cedric when we stuck in the hospital for 3.5 days!

Sebastian has his first check-up tomorrow. The big topic will likely be the portwine birth mark he has along his chest and left leg. There's some discussion of whether it will fade or not. If it won't, we'll likely look at our options for clearing it up. Our biggest concern is that it's not a health problem, which all indications are it won't be at all.

Sebastian Mikhael Blanco

The little guy is here! Sebastian came in at an astounding 9 POUNDS 9 OUNCES and 21 3/4"! What a cute little guy!!! He was born April 11th, 2009 @ 11:35 AM.

Sebastian Mikhael Blanco is Born!!!!

7cm and She Needs to Push

We're not far now. The pushing should be quick...maybe 20-30 minutes away? EXCITING!

OK, Come On Out Baby Boo!

The Pitocin is Attached

Michele is being drugged now. In the next half hour we'll hopefully see the contractions increase and hopefully Michele will fly towards 10 centimeters. Grandma and Grandpa Colorado are en route to the hospital with big brother Cedric -- who's wondering where my mommy is :-)

Michele and I have a half hour to just chat and discuss nothing too exciting. Actually, we saw The Big One last night, a 1996 documentary by Michael Moore. You'd think it was about today. The quest for the mighty dollar, baby. *sigh*

Anyway, next update in a little bit!

Pitocin It Is -- Michele is 5 centimeters

They're going to start injecting Pitocin. Bah. Michele is taking it fine, it's not a huge deal. They are checking her right now.

Nurse says Michele is 5 centimeters. So, she "probably won't need too much."

And if you don't know what 5 centimeters means...ask your mom or something. :-)

Michele Update: Yawn!!

Nothing to report. Michele's water is broken, but she's not having substatial contractions. It's currently 7:40 PM and the nurses want to give Michele Pitocin if labor doesn't start soon. We want to avoid the drugs, but we have no choice on this one since there's only a relatively small window where you want the water broken without a baby looking up at you. :-/

So, something should be happening soon, one way or the other.

Cedric is doing well at home with his grandparents. Hopefully things start moving here before he decides he needs to test them a little more. ;-)

We'll see you soon, Cedric!!! Just give mommy and daddy a little more time! Enjoy Elmo!!

St. Joseph's Hospital Address

Hospital address and info:

1835 Franklin Street
Denver, CO 80218
(303) 837-7111

Waiting in the Delivery Room for the Magic

Pics of Michele in Triage

This May Take a Bit

No such luck on the quick-delivery thing. :-) It's funny really, we did all the classes last time for Cedric and then we had the most accelerated, holy-crap-that-was-fast delivery imaginable (she woke up to contractions just past 2 AM, Cedric was born 6:44 AM!). This time around, Michele's water broke in bed (as opposed to in the car last time) but she is barely feeling the contractions and we need to actually walk and stuff to get them going this time.

So, our training was 2 years early, but here we are!

And this time around, my laptop is setup (instead of sitting in the car), so expect more status updates and pics of the process.

Hopefully this won't be too long. Once we can get the contractions heavier, it'll be a breeze. (The man says.)

At Triage

Michele is having contractions but didn't even know. This may go faster than we thought after all.

Michele's Water Just Broke

Big time while sleeping. Two minutes and we're ready to leave for hospital!

First Run: We May Be Hospital Bound!

Michele's water may have broken. It's only barely leaking. She feels a bit fuzzy and has had some contractions, but nothing hurting yet. We've been in touch with the midwives and we're prepping to get ready to go to the hospital. The sure bet is we'll AT LEAST be heading there within the next 12 hours.

Getting exciting!

Beta: Code Cram

I've been working on a little project for a little while now called Code Cram. I'm actually designing it for a very important customer of mine:

Me.

The goal is to create a system that allows me to easily jump from language to language with minimal "refresh." I also aim to eliminate the language from the competent developer's skill requirements. To become great developers, we need to focus on great design and execution and not spend meaningless brain cycles recalling how to implement the language.

The hope with Code Cram is to build a reference guide that's between a cheatsheet and a book. It's designed for the developer that knows the language already, but because they must go between so many languages, it can get confusing to remember how to perform even some of the simple tasks.

Over the next weeks and months I'll perfecting the ActionScript material on Code Cram and authoring the reference for the other languages. I'd love to hear feedback. So check it out and let me know how it goes. :-)

Origins of ZaBlanc

The origins of my handle, ZaBlanc, as cross-posted from Square State:

Years ago I was an AOL junkie. I used to ring up big bills doing AOL chat with various online ladies. :-) Because I was on so much, but only worked part-time, I would take advantage of AOL's "Free First Month" promotion a lot.

So, every few months maybe, I'd find a new credit card number (I would solicit various family members) and pick a new name. I'd used NewYorkMetFan, Periscope, and some others. Then, one month, I used TheBlanc.

I liked it, it was a reference to my last name and made me sound mysterious. ;-) The next time around, I changed it a bit and went with ZaBlanc. It's supposed to be TheBlanc, but how maybe a French person would say it.

I loved it and I use it for every site that allows me to to this day.

Another Baby Update

Michele had her final pre-natal appointment this afternoon and had some contractions afterward. Her whozamawhat is still far back, so the mid-wife said it could be a week, but they really can't predict. Right now, she's just relaxing.

Big snowstorm rolling in to Denver now, though. Tomorrow will be a mess. So we're hoping nothing happens in the next 36 hours. :-)

I will be liveblogging from my cell phone. Hopefully, things go better than last time when Michele was going so quickly I never got a chance to get my computer to the delivery room. See what happened here!

This time, there will be more frequent updates!

Baby Update

Still not here. 7 days til Michele's due date. Heard from my bro this evening as well, and he's waiting patiently. :-)

In other news, Jay Cutler has been traded to the Chicago Bears. This ends two months of bickering between him and management over previous trade rumors. Ridiculous. Jay needed to go and it's sad.

Good riddance. Hope you had the time of your life. Thanks for the 1st round draft picks, Chicago, and VIVA KYLE ORTON (or Chris Simms)!!!

Rush Lymbough Blanco is Born!

Proud to announce that early this morning night our second son was born into the world, Rush Lymbough Blanco! He was born at 6:06 AM, weighing in at a lightweight 6 pounds, 6.6 ounces. Mommy and baby are doing fine despite a slight smoker's cough that Rush seems to have.

He's also gaining weight at a troubling rate, wants President Obama to fail, has a wicked addiction to Oxycotin, and has already refused to visit New York. But, all these things are minor as all the nurses insist how clear it he loves America.

:-)

UPDATE: April Fools'! (Uh, yeah).