Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 79

They took out the NG tube from Samuel last night. He started taking clear liquids this morning. If he drinks enough they will take out the IV.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 78

Praise God, Samuel had two bowel movements today. He is also completely off oxygen. They also turned off the suction from the NG tube. The surgery practitioner said the NG tube could come out as soon as tonight. The next step is to wait a while and then they will start giving him clear liquids by mouth. Leyla's uncle and aunt are flying in from Puerto Rico tonight to help and to celebrate Christmas. It is going to be difficult not having Samuel at home for Christmas. The giant bull dozer toy is going to stay under the tree until Samuel comes home. We are very pleased with his progress. Thank you for your prayers and kind words.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 77

Samuel is doing as well as can be expected. They have reduced his oxygen from 1 liter to .2 liter which is great. Yesterday he was getting about half the pain medication of the day before. Today he is off the continuous feed of pain medication and it is just as needed. We are walking Samuel around 3 times a day to try to get his intestines moving again. He will be given pedialyte as soon as he passes gas or has a bowel movement. I know this sounds like a funny request but could you pray that he passes gas or has a BM. That is the next phase of his recovery. He really likes to be held. Leyla and I are taking turns. More later.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 76

The surgeons rounded today and I was able to ask them several questions. I am also going to try to answer some of the questions each of you have posted on facebook.

Did the vomiting cause the hernia or did the hernia cause the vomiting?
The intestine went up through a hole in the diaphragm and twisted. When the food got to the twist, it couldn't pass and caused the vomiting. The intestine went up in there over a period of months. This isn't something that happened overnight.

Why did the surgery take so long?
There was a lot of scar tissue on the liver from the previous surgery. The liver was actually attached to the intestine and to the abdomen wall. They had to cut the scar tissue off the liver and the intestine. The intestine was also attached to the abdomen wall. Samuel had to have a blood transfusion during surgery because his liver bled when they removed the scar tissue.

How big is the patch in the diaphragm?
On Samuel's right side, he has hardly any material left in his diaphragm. He does have a small rim but it is now mostly a gortex patch there. See the picture I posted on facebook.

Why is Samuel on so much oxygen?
Samuel is on a full liter of oxygen because he is breathing fast due to the surgery. The NG tube down his throat is also bothering him. To give you some history Samuel was completely off oxygen in January. Before that he was getting .2 Liter just at night.

How long is Samuel going to be in the hospital?
He is going to be here for 7 to 10 days or until he passes gas or has a bowel movement.

How long is it going to take for the incision to heal?
6 weeks.

When is he going to be able to eat again?
A few days.

There are two goals for today:
1. To remove the Foley (a Foley is like a catheter for boys). They just did that this morning.
2. To have him walk. Samuel's intestines are in shock from the surgery and we need to wake them up to get them working again.

Thank you for your prayers.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 75

Leyla and I are in total shock and in kind of a daze. Forgive me if this post is incoherent. Samuel had three days of vomiting a week and a half ago. We took him to the ER and they said that there is a really bad virus going around. After a shot for Nausea Samuel recovered and had about four days where he was feeling well. We had a wonderful birthday party for Samuel. This past Wednesday Samuel started vomiting again. On Friday morning he was bent over screaming in pain. Leyla took him to urgent care at 12:30pm. I arrived at 1:30pm. They determined that Samuel was dehydrated and sent us to the ER for a fluid IV. After several hours they took an X-Ray and determined that Samuel had re-herniated. A couple loops of intestine had gone up into the chest cavity. He had surgery at 8:30pm to put the intestine back into the abdomen and sew up the hole. They were finished about 12:15am. The surgery took several hours because of all the scar tissue from the previous re-herniation. (Samuel had his second re-herniation in April 2010.) This time they put a gortex patch in his diaphragm. Hopefully this will prevent future rips in the diaphragm. Samuel is in the hospital now. They have him on morphine for the pain and an anti-itch medicine for the side effect of the morphine. He is also on 1 liter of oxygen in a cannula. His lungs are fine but he just needed some extra oxygen after the surgery. He is running a temp and they are giving him Tylenol for that. Samuel isn't too happy since he also has an Nasal Gastric (NG) tube down his throat to take out the fluid that accumulated in his stomach during surgery. Samuel is out of the NICU and in a regular room at the hospital. He will be in here a week since they had to reopen the incision plus a little more.

We are living this verse today:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose.

Thank God that the herniation was found before something worse happened.
Thank God that my work was let out early on Friday and I was able to be with Leyla.
Thank God that a surgeon was available to do the Surgery on the same day.
Thank God for Gary and Linda Fisher who stood by our side in the Operating waiting room.
Thank God that Leyla's mom is on vacation and is able to help with the girls.
Thank God that Leyla's uncle is coming for Christmas on Wednesday so we will have even more hands to help.
Thank God that there is no RSV going around and the kids can visit Samuel.

Thank you for your prayers.

Sharing Calendars in Windows Phone 7

My wife and I have two windows phones with separate windows live ids. We want to share calendars. This is especially important for us with all the doctors appointments that my son has.
The 1.0 version of Windows Phone 7 does not allow you to use the calendar sharing in either hotmail or live mail. I have confirmed this with Microsoft. (See calendar syncing). It also does not allow you to do calendar sharing with separate gmail accounts. You also cannot share a single hotmail calendar when you have two separate live ids. Google to the rescue. You can use a single gmail account and link it to two phones.

Here is the process:
1. Create a gmail account.
2. On both phones, in the windows phone settings add the gmail account. Under content to sync, unselect everything except Calendar.
3. On both phones, go to the calendar, click on the elipsis at the bottom and click on calendars. Disable the windows live calendar and make sure the google calendar is on.

That is it.

Enjoy.

Dell X51V vs HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 Part 1

I have been waiting a long time to upgrade from my Dell X51V to a smart phone. If you are not familiar with the Dell X51V, it is a Windows Pocket PC with wireless but no phone capability.

Overall (WP7) Windows Phone 7 is a great phone OS. It is rock solid. I have had zero lock ups or crashes on my first day of using it about 5 hours. It succeeds Microsoft's goals of "Always delightful" and "Incredibly Mine".

The phone set up was easy. It brought in all my contacts from hotmail, gmail, and facebook.

I am very impressed with the live tiles and how WP7 handles email. It is easy to delete unwanted messages and get right back out. In fact deleting gmail in the phone is easier than web based gmail itself. You don't accidentally go into the message when trying to delete a lot of messages.

The browser is incredibly smooth and fast. It supports multiple tabs and it remembers the tabs when you go back in. My bank already supports WP7 so it is easy to check balances and make payments. The funny thing is, the Windows Phone 7 forums look horrible on wp7.

The ME tile on WP7 is cool. It allows you to see updates to Windows Live and Facebook. You can change your picture and change your status here. However, it is missing a lot of things. It is a phone and there should be a My Phone Number. It should also have my address if the phone is lost. It should also have an ICE (In Case of Emergency) phone number. It is also missing twitter integration.

The text messaging works great. It corrects words as you type. I like how it indents replies.

The camera is a 5MP camera. It has no image stabilization so it is nearly impossible to take a non-blurry picture. However the video is better than expected for a phone. It is way cool how the phone automatically syncs your pictures to skydrive. The pictures hub works well to organize your photos.

The voice recognition is incredible. It does not require any training, it recognized my voice right away.

Compared to my Dell Axim X51V, my Windows Phone does lack a lot of things that I use every day but it was just released yesterday.

• All the notes in Outlook that I had cannot be synced to Windows Phone 7
• Outlook tasks cannot be synced
  
• Windows Phone 7 has One Note built in but it does not Sync To Sky Drive. I guess I will be using evernote.
  
• There is no To Do List application that syncs to the desktop.
• There is no blue tooth keyboard for the phone like the stow away keyboard for the Axim.
• There is no eWallet type application that syncs to the desktop.
  

On my Axim I get about 2 hours of continuous usage. Battery life is about 3.5 hours of continuous usage on the HTC HD7 where I was browsing the marketplace, downloading applications, installing applications and removing applications.

It looks like WP7 marketplace is following in the footsteps for the iPhone marketplace. Over a thousand applications on launch day is impressive. However, 90% of the applications are crap. Most paid applications have no trial.

More to come...

Free Ninja Database Lite Released

After much hard work and expense, the database that we have been working on is finally complete. Ninja Database Lite is an object database for Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, and .NET. I have decided to release the lite version for free until October 31st, 2010.

http://www.kellermansoftware.com/t-ninja-forums.aspx

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg

NUnit Test Runner for Windows Phone 7

After finding a bug in Windows Phone 7 Isolated storage I decided to create an NUnit Test Runner for Windows Phone 7.

Isolated Storage Bug

I am creating a two different databases for Windows Phone 7. I have almost 400 unit tests but no way to run them in the emulator.

Here are some initial screen shots.

This is the list screen. You can click on an item to get the stack trace.



This is the detail screen with the stack trace.



Any feedback would be appreciated.

Samuel Finzer's CDH Success Story

Whirlwind Overview of Windows Phone 7 Series

Microsoft will be coming out with a new phone to compete with the iPhone called the Windows Phone 7 series (WP7). It is slated for release for holidays 2010 (the word on the street is September 2010). A lot of people are calling it iPhone V2 since there are similarities: no application background processes are allowed, each application is sand boxed as to not interfere with other applications, and the rich graphical interface. The goals for the phone are to have a predictable, safe, high performing phone with long battery life.

Features

• Microsoft's better competitor to the iPod, Zune is built in.
• XBox live integration.
• You can play XBox XNA games on Windows Phone 7.
• Windows Mobile Marketplace built in. From what I have seen, the search and categorization is better than the iPhone marketplace. You will be able to buy applications, games, music and videos.
  
• Office 2010 Mobile
• People Hub
• Pictures Hub
• Music and Video Hub
  
• Accelerometer
• GPS
• Camera

Metro User Interface Design
WP7 is better than iPhone when it comes to user interface design. The design language is called Metro which takes cues from transportation icons. The start menu has tiles on it which takes you to hubs. Everything is organized into related areas. For example the music hub will not only show you the artist biography when you click on a song, it will use the phone location to determine where the artist is playing next. Another cool thing about the Metro design are the panoramic views where the phone views a portion of the area of an application. It makes the phone experience seem larger than life. Metro makes the design language of the iPhone seem as antiquated as a Mac classic.

Target Market
The target market for Windows Phone 7 is what Microsoft calls the life maximizer; someone that has a busy professional life and a busy home life. The example couple that they use is a man that has his own architectural small business and a mom that works part time. The initial goal is more of a consumer focus than business focus, helping a busy end user rather than solving business problems.

Standard Hardware
One of the pains of developing for any phone is the wide variety of processors, memory, screen sizes and touch support. Microsoft has solved this problem by having base hardware requirements and only two screen sizes. Here are the current Windows Phone 7 Hardware requirements:

Screen
Capacitive touch with 4 or more contact points
WVGA (800×480) or HVGA (480×320) resolution

Sensors
A-GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light, Proximity

Camera
5 megapixels or more, flash required, camera button required

Multimedia
Common detailed specs, Codec Acceleration

Memory
256 MB RAM or more, 8 GB Flash or more

GPU
DirectX 9 acceleration

CPU
ARMv7 Cortex/Scorpion or better

What do you need to develop Windows Phone 7 Applications?
All the tools to develop WP7 applications are free. There are two ways to develop applications on the phone, with Silverlight 3 and XNA (for games). Expression Blend 4 is used to create the cool animations for the phone such as rotating, zooming, and panning. When you install the tools it will install Visual Studio 2010 express. If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, it will install the Windows Phone 7 tools as an add on. Creating pages in Silverlight 3 is much like creating pages for web applications. The design language used is not HTML but XAML. The code behind portion of Silverlight is currently limited to C#. Other .NET languages such as VB.NET will be added later.

How do you sell your Windows Phone 7 Applications?
In order to sell your Windows Phone 7 applications you must first register on the marketplace. The fee is $99 per year. To submit an application to the market place (free or commercial) is $99/each. This fee helps pay for the certification of your application. Your application is verified that it does not try to break out of the sandbox, that it performs well, and it the content complies complies with any applicable laws for the countries you select to distribute your application.

Limitations of Windows Phone 7

• Each application is sandboxed and has it's own separate isolated storage. This storage is limited to 2GB. No other application can get to this storage.
• No ActiveSync. If you want to synchronize data you must first upload it from your application to a web server and then download from the web server on to your corresponding desktop application. There is no standard mechanism, you must create custom code to do this.
• No background processes. This is part of the Windows Phone goal of having long battery life. No more stupid twitter apps that make your battery last an hour.
  
• No socket namespace. That means no FTP in the initial release.
• No subscription/continuity model in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
• No SQL Server compact edition for the initial release. There are several open source and commercial vendors alternatives.
  

Videos on how to do Windows Phone 7 Development
Mix 2010 Videos
Windows Phone 7 in 7
Behind the emulator
Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7 Training Kit

Free Developer tools for Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools
Expression Blend 4
Expression Blend 4 Windows Phone
Expression Blend 4 SDK

Here is a great Windows Phone 7 FAQ
Windows Phone 7 FAQ

Windows Phone 7 End User
http://www.windowsphone7series.com/

Twitter
http://twitter.com/wp7dev

Blog
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wpdev/default.aspx

Developer Portal
http://developer.windowsphone.com/

Windows Phone 7 Forum
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsphone7series

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 74

Praise God. Samuel came home from the hospital on Saturday. He is in really good spirits, giving smiles everywhere he goes in the house. He missed his toys and has been playing with them with renewed excitement. He is crawling around. You can tell Samuel is taking it easy since he is crawling quite a bit slower. He is eating well but not drinking as much as he did before. Thank you for your prayers.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 73

Thank God. All good news. Leyla called and said that Samuel is a different boy today. Samuel had a #2 so big that hospital housekeeping had to be called (he had not gone since last Thursday). The right lung has fully inflated and the doctors are planning to take out the second chest tube. Samuel is feeling a lot better, sitting up in bed and standing up in bed. Samuel is drinking a lot of fluids. He hasn't eaten like himself yet, but I am sure that will change after today. Most likely Samuel will be going home soon.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 72

Praise God, Samuel has been moved out of PICU into a regular room. He is off oxygen now. He still has some drainage from his chest tubes. Samuel is still in pain. You can tell when the morphine wears off. Samuel is eating a little, but only for Leyla. Thankfully my parents have come to help to take care of the girls while Leyla is with Samuel. Samuel will be out of the hospital in days.

You can pray specifically for:
1. Samuel's pain
2. That Samuel would heal quickly.
3. Leyla's emotional well being. It is difficult seeing your child going through such difficulty.
4. That the BPD Doctor would give Samuel a green light to go on vacation. The kids have been looking forward to this vacation for 2 years and have been counting the days. Leyla is petrified to take Samuel out of the area of Children's Hospital should something happen again. Leyla wants me to take the kids without her on vacation. I am petrified to leave Leyla alone with Samuel. Does anyone know if there is a good children's hospital at Myrtle Beach?

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 71

Thank you for your prayers, your calls, and your kind words on facebook and twitter. We can definitely see the mercy of God in the current trial that Samuel is in. If Samuel would not have had his right lung collapse we would have not have known about the silver dollar size hole in his diaphragm.

Samuel's surgery went well yesterday. The doctor took four hours to sew up the hole in the diaphragm and take pictures of the right lung. Thankfully, they were able to go in laproscopically so there are only three small incisions in his chest and one in his belly button. They had to put in a second chest tube so that all the fluid would drain and so the right lung could inflate.

At first I thought that Samuel would be in the hospital for months again but because they were able to fix him without making large incisions he will be home sooner rather than later. He is able to take clear liquids today and later on in the evening they will try to give him soft foods. He is not intubated, he just has a nasal cannula with a .l Liters of oxygen.

Once his chest tubes are finished draining fluid, Samuel will be moved from PICU to a regular room. Please keep praying.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 70

My 16 month old beautiful baby boy, Samuel had his right lung collapse yesterday. He is currently in the NICU. He just had a CT-Scan which revealed that the hole in his diagram has reopened and his intestine is moving up into the lung cavity. Please pray for our family as we go through what will probably be another long stay for Samuel at Children’s Hospital. As you can imagine, Leyla and I are pretty broken up about it. Samuel was doing so well and now this is quite a set back. It is so severe that Samuel will be having a surgery today to put the intestine back down and sew up the hole.

Please pray.

Also pray for my four year old, Jasmine. She has intestinal flu. I am taking care of her while Leyla is right by Samuel’s side.

God is faithful. He is going to bring us through this trial too.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 69

Here we go again. From my wife:

I took Samuel to Children's ER yesterday afternoon because he was breathing so heavy and very labored.

The Drs thought that he had a severe asthma attack. They also speculated that he had a virus (i.e. RSV). However, after reviewing the results of the CT scan, the Drs found out that Samuel has a pneumothorax in his right lung ... again! They discontinued the breathing treatments and meds to treat asthma. Right now I am typing this message while the surgeons are in the process of inserting a chest tube to release the pressure in the area. Last time, Samuel had a 5 day stay. I am expecting about the same amount of days this time around.

Pray for Samuel for a speedy recovery. My poor baby has gone through so much ... yet, spontaneous pneumothorax can occur any time, especially in the same area of previous ones. I am hoping and praying that this is the last one.

I request no visitors until Samuel is transferred out of PICU to a regular room.

Keep us in your prayers.

Love,

Leyla

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 68

It has been a while since the last update. Samuel is doing well. He is eating table food, drinking from a straw, crawling, pulling himself up on the coffee table. Samuel is completely off oxygen now. The doctor said that it is a miracle and this boy shouldn't be well. Samuel will have his G-Tube removed in a few weeks.

Samuel has caught up to 50th percentile in fine motor skills. He will begin speech therapy soon. He is quite a bit behind since he was sedated for so long and also because we speak both English and Spanish in our home.

Thank you for your prayers.