brucetim's comments

Hi Erica! I was there as a Sales Engineer serving the southwest region around the same time you were there too (2000-2002), based in San Diego. I wish I had kept the RaQ and Qube units I had at home (I had pretty much one of everything from Qube2 through RaQ 550).

Cobalt was an awesome place to work and had amazingly skilled employees. Too bad the Sun acquisition was the death knell for the products...

Been a CPAP user for 20 years (am 55 now). Can't sleep without it. It actually fixed my acid reflux symptoms; by not gasping and choking so much to breathe air in, I seemed to stop having reflux.

Mine is nonpositional. CPAP pressure is 16 and allows me to sleep on my back, but I'm ususlly a side sleeper. I use nasal pillows after an over-the-nose mask for the first 6 or 7 years. If I lost weight it'd probably help but I also have a deviated septum and an elongated soft palate / large tongue for my mouth size. So a perfect storm for apnea. Fortunately CPAP works well for me and I've never had an issue with mask fit or any other interference with sleep, aside from the air noises my new machine makes. I sleep with earplugs or earbuds with rain sounds (also have mild misophonia so the sound of the machine rising/falling as I breathe in and out, vs my original actual constant pressure machine, drives me bonkers) and/or a fan in my room to cover up the breathing sounds :)

Sorry to hear that your options have not worked -- it sounds like you've tried a lot of things. Is it worth getting another sleep study to see if there are any other changes that might explain the issues? I know my first doctor/study was nowhere near as complete as my 2nd one. It was the 2nd one that raised my pressure from 11 to 16 and that made a huge difference.

Good luck!

Always buy seats for your kids! Don't try to hold the baby on your lap; it won't end well for either of you :)

Seat belt extenders for larger fliers are invaluable for getting the car seat buckled in too!

Learn how to properly install the car seat. Lots of places, including fire depts, have clinics and can check your work. Do this well before you go to the hospital. Last thing you want is to be fiddling with it and unsure as you head home

Learn how to fold and unfold the stroller. They seem easy, but most have a trick.

Do the night care if you can, especially in the early weeks. Let mom sleep as much as possible. Give her time to take a shower, have a nap, etc.

She's going to have "bad days" and snap/yell. Don't take it personally; her hormones are all over the place! See previous note about giving her time/space :)

You're going to dress/feed/play with the baby differently than she wants. It's ok. As long as the baby isn't too hot/cold the outfit doesn't really matter.

It really does all go by faster than you think it will... my first-born twins just graduated college after being born about 7 months ago :)

bark.us on a google pixel 6, combined with google family link. for a middle schooler. nothing is perfect but we (and the student) agree it's a good combination of accountability and "monitoring from a distance"

some of the bark alerts are hilarious as it's just dumb pattern matching. for example, we got an alert about "alcohol content" when she listened to a "sound of music" song on spotify that had the word champagne in the lyrics :)

Kepner-Tregoe ("K-T") is something our IT department was given training in a few years ago. It's not specifically for software/IT though; it's a pretty generic framework. https://kepner-tregoe.com

While searching for it online, I also came across https://www.uapb.edu/sites/www/Uploads/Assessment/webinar/se...

Hope those help.

Yep that's the anchor. Just can't see the flukes due to the angle the picture was taken from. Check https://i.redd.it/99rhoexauq2z.jpg for a better view.

Why is the anchor gold? The Retention Excellence Award (previously known as the Golden Anchor Award); an award given by the United States Department of the Navy for sustaining superior levels of military retention. The award was established by the United States Fleet Forces Command through the Fleet Retention Excellence Program. Deployable Navy ships are authorized to paint their anchors gold as a symbol of earning the award.

I've been canning for many years. Learned it from my grandmother while I was growing up, but she did the super old-school wax seals. A game changer for me are Tattler reusable lids: http://tattlerproducts.com

I bought some big bags of both the "regular" and wide-mouth lids/gaskets several years ago and have never worried about the metal lids that come with the jars when they're new (got them saved in a separate box "just in case" and also use them occasionally when I'm gifting canned goods). There is a slight difference in the way to tighten the lids during processing, but the occasional "didn't seal" is usually my fault, and we just eat the contents of that jar sooner rather than putting it on the shelf.

If you do any volume, or don't want to get stuck without metal lids, I cannot recommend the Tattler lids enough! Be sure to get the originals; there are some knock-off brands which are not made with the BPA-free plastic, don't last as long, etc.