Zoombinis Island Odyssey Technical Note
(from their support page)
Symptom: "Screen Freezes or Turns Black after Intro Movie (Mac OS 10.3)"
Detail: With Zoombinis Island Odyssey successfully installed, the screen freezes or turns black after the intro movie plays. This issue occurs on a Macintosh running OS 10.3. Consult the remainder of this note for additional information.
Cause: Zoombinis Island Odyssey will not function on Macintosh OS 10.3. (This operating system was released after the release of Zoombinis Island Odyssey.)
I feel so bad for Abby... When a program says that it's compatible with Mac OS X, you don't expect them to effectively say, "oh, not the current OS X". It's even more annoying because the game has the capability to update and patch itself via the internet. Yet even though it's up to date by its own declaration, it won't run on 10.3 (released a year ago). Michelle and I have decided that Abby can bring the CD with her to Chicago. That way if she gets into boring, quiet times, she can play it there and not drive her grandparents crazy with "what can I do now?!"
Storm - I'm following up this post the next morning because we had strong storms come through last night. Whenever we have nearby lightening I like to power down the computer and its network and unplug it from the wall.
Timothy's visit - I worked half a day yesterday so that I could take Timothy in the afternoon to see a geneticist at Children's Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD). I'm pretty sure Michelle and I visited one shortly after having the twins. It seems that whenever there are birth defects, even minor ones, Dartmouth likes to have you see a geneticist so that they can keep their eyes open for related defects. They like to know whether one obvious defect is just a part of others that go with it.
In medical lingo Timothy was born with Hemifacial Microsomia. In simplest terms it means that the lower half of one side of the face is underdeveloped. Compared to some pictures I've seen, his is relatively minor leading to a slight lack of left/right symmetry. So far no one seems to think this condition is worth corrective surgery. The microtia that affects his ear is often found in cases of hemifacial microsomia. The two are strongly linked together.
Now what the geneticists do is look for other things that could be more hidden. For instance, a recent x-ray seemed to indicate that Timothy had slight segmentation anomaly in his spine. If you think of your spine as a set of Lego blocks, this indicates that during pre-natal development, two didn't completely separate into their normal individual elements. This needs to be monitored as he grows up. In the next few months he'll likely see a pediatric orthopedist. Another thing that will be checked are his kidneys via an ultrasound scan. This is only to check, not because there's any symptom. Certainly his pre-natal scans showed nothing unusual about the kidneys (unlike the pre-natal scans of the twins). The doctor listened to his heart to see if he could detect any murmur but everything seemed fine there as well. The last thing they look for in his development is to monitor the development of the bones in his arms to make sure that it is even and symmetric. So far things appear fine there.
Overall no one knows what causes this. Perhaps as Timothy grows up, the causes will be better known. Knowing the cause, though, won't affect him much. With modern medicine most of its effects can be addressed or corrected. The geneticist is not there to place blame on anyone's heredity. His role is to know what other correlated things to be mindful of.
Claire got home from school just as I was about to leave for the hospital. She generously offered to come with and lend a hand. She was quite a trooper helping me with diaper bags, strollers, keeping him busy, etc.