Jason Leveille's Blog

Currently, my office library consists of the following books. This does not include the books/magazines that I keep at home.

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Tagged in : Miscellaneous

I recently had what I would consider to be my first serious brush with burnout. During the years that I have been a web developer, when it became more than a hobby, there have been times when I felt tired. I don't ever remember feeling burnout though. In February, shortly after the birth of my second daughter, I noticed a slip in productivity, as well as a general inability to focus. When I say inability to focus, I really mean an inability to get into a work zone. I met my deadlines, continued to work on my own projects, and kept up with my reading list, however I just felt off. I did my best to push through my sluggishness, however, as it had often done in the past, persistence didn't seem to be getting me over the hurdles.

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Tagged in : Miscellaneous

As the month mark approaches since my last post I figured I would take a few moments to talk about some of the things I’ve been working on.  I’ve been working on:

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Tagged in : Miscellaneous, Plone, Pylons

I enjoy hearing about the paths people have taken on the journey to their current job.  Many people seem to find themselves with a job they previously never would have envisioned holding.  As little as 6 years ago I could not have imagined having a career in Web Development.  Here is how I got here…

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Tagged in : Miscellaneous

This past month has been an extremely busy one (coupled with an exceptionally unbusy 12 day vacation!).  In case you are wondering what I’ve been up to, here is the abbreviated version:

• 12 days of vacation in Maine.  9 of which were involved swimming/boating/fishing during the day and campfires at night.
• I moved this blog over to slicehost and spent a good deal of time setting up the OS (Ubuntu 8.04) and webserver (Apache 2).  I am absolutely loving the complete control I now have.  So long shared hosting.
• I spent a good deal of time at the beginning of August overhauling SimpleMC.  It’s crazy how much I still have to do … and it sucks that I’ve broken the editor in FF and IE and I can’t seem to find the time to fix it.  The 70ish people who have downloaded the app are probably pretty disappointed.
• This month saw a number of ASP/SQL applications attacked for which we were hired to remediate the security holes.  Can you say lesser database user priviledged accounts and data filters.
• Grad class tonight (Software Enginnering) and tomorrow (Artificial Intelligence).  I’m not looking forward to either.  Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised and at least one of the classes will go beyond theory.
• We broke up with our daycare provider and moved our daughter to a new daycare.  This has been pretty stressful, but things are going well.

Tagged in : Graduate School, Miscellaneous, Security

Tomorrow I’m having heart surgery!!  It’s really more of a procedure than a surgery, but it does involve doctors going into my heart and making some burns around my Pulmonary veins.  For 8 years now I have lived with Atrial Fibrillation, and tomorrow this procedure will hopefully be the start of a life without AF.  For me anyways, when I’m having an episode I get tired, winded, light headed, and weak.  I have found over the years that certain things tend to precipitate an episode, include: drinking beer (damn), staying up late (damn), unhealthy eating habits, drinking coffee before bed (damn), and allowing myself to get dehydrated.  Also, laying on my left side at night tends to cause problems.  When an episode does start it can last anywhere from 1 - 24 hours.  Just this morning I came off the tail end of a near 24 hour episode.  I only recently found out that exercise can cause my heart to go back into normal sinus rhythm.  So, a light jog/brisk walk this morning did the trick.

So, goodbye AF.  You have been a pain in my ass and you will not be missed.

Update: The surgery went well.  From what I’ve been told I was very hard to control on the operating table and had to be restrained.  At one point I sat up during the procedure and knocked my  head against one of the overhead devices.  There were 281 different burns made around my Pulmonary veins, and evidently I am a rarity, as I have 5 veins instead of the typical 4 (go me)!  I think the total time I was on the table was around 5 hours.  After my recovery period I was pretty sick due to the dose of anesthesia needed to keep me under.  Currenty I’m taking 5 different drugs, 2 of which are blood thinners.  I hate medication.  Lisa was awesome of course and is taking great care of me.  Her mom came into town to watch Cameron.  We’re so lucky to have her.  Anyway, my healing phase is 3 months, after which I hope to be drug free and free of AF.

Tagged in : Miscellaneous